An interesting master thesis upon typography and computer based exploration was written by Andrea Novali. The 245 pages take the scope of computer based or computer generated typography and finishes with a concept for ‘illuminated natural letters’ (the big letters you will find in old books). The result is a script for the Mac OS X scripting IDE Nodebox, that you can re-use. It’s released under open source license. The thesis unfortunately is only available in Italian, but nevertheless I really suggest to download the poster or flip through the thesis to get the basic concept. The thesis is available over there.
You will download the thesis from the website of EXP, a non-profit and free research team focusing typographical aspects. They are interested in “reading processes, the influence of typeface’s irregularity on reading performances and the use of non linear writing in order to face complex problems” and got very interesting contents on their website, so go ahead.
