The Videogame Text

0Figure 2-43. “X-Beelden” (“X-images”) by Van Doesburg, 1919 or 1920. (Blotkamp, “Theo van Doesburg” 31)

0Figure 2-44. De Stijl logo, designed by Theo Van Doesburg and Vilmos Huszár.

0Figure 2-45. Vilmos Huszár, Ornament XXe eeuwse stijl (1917).

0Though their relationship with actual videogames is purely formal, some typefaces and lettering created in the early part of the 20th century bear a surprising resemblance to forms found in videogames of the 1970s. Chief among these designs is the work of the Dutch De Stijl group, an artist group associated with the periodical, De Stijl, first published in 1918 (Purvis 25)⁠. Theo van Doesburg was the group’s founder and sole editor of the journal, and it is his dominant personality which characterizes much of the groups ideals, expressed in a series of manifestos which lay out the group’s core ideal, identifying and uniting the universal consciousness of artistic expression (Blotkamp, “Introduction” ix)⁠. In practice, this meant “searching for and the most fundamental elements of each separate field of art and then uniting these elements in a well-balanced relationship” (Blotkamp, “Introduction” ix)⁠. The group’s artistic works tend to emphasize rectilinear forms and primary colors, and the typography employed in the journal itself is strikingly performative (see figure 2-43). Typography itself is an art based on the mechanical reproduction of a limited set of forms, so it seems a fitting medium for explore the aesthetic ideas of De Stijl.

0Figure 2-38. Sample of Westminster typeface.

0The origins of Westminster (Figure 2-38) are somewhat unclear, but it emerged at least as early as 1971 as figure 2-39 demonstrates. It is also the most pervasive and common of the MICR fonts because it has been distributed freely with Windows operating systems since Windows 98. Its distribution of slabs has much in common with Orbit-B, but Westminster’s proportions are much narrower. Microsoft’s typography website does provide a few tantalizing details about Westminster, but does not identify the designer or exact year of origin. Printed below is the full text of Microsoft’s information about Westminster, which comes included with the font software:

0“Data 70” (or “Data Seventy”) is another typeface which some claim is the first full alphabet based on the MICR font E-13B (Figure 2-26). Fortunately, the origins of Data 70 are better documented, so its claims to originality can be evaluated in more detail. Owens and Reinfurt, in their article on the influence of E-13B, only discuss Data 70, but they claim that, like Jaspert does of Moore Computer, that Data 70 “expanded the look of the E13B numeral set into a full upper and lowercase alphabet” (Owens & Reinfurt 147)⁠. Since Moore Computer is an uppercase-only typeface, it is true that Data 70 is, in one sense, a further expansion than Moore Computer. However, the fact that Data 70 includes Arabic numerals bearing little to no resemblance to E-13B (see figure 2-27) suggests instead an indirect line of influence. Bob Newman designed Data 70 in 1970 for Letraset, a manufacturer of rub-on lettering and other graphics (Owens & Reinfurt 147)⁠. Its characters adopt the extraneous slabs of E-13B, but Data 70’s are more rounded and more judicious and consistent in their distribution. In general, the typeface reflects a specific stylization that evokes the sense of E-13B while emblematizing the original.

0The technology necessary for MICR developed roughly parallel with OCR and addressed a similar need: inputting large amounts of information into a computer system using characters which could be read and verified by humans. In the 1950s, the growing demand of check processing demanded that a mechanized, automated solution replace the tedious methods of hand sorting, routing, and processing all personal checks (McKenney 61)⁠. A Technical Subcommittee of the American Banker’s Association convened in 1954 to address the problem, and after a series of consultations with banks, manufacturers and the Federal Reserve Bank, the committee developed a recommendation and standard for a common machine language for check processing, which was published in its final form as Document 147 of the Bank Management Commission, first published in 1959 and still in use today (McKenney 75)⁠.