一家字体设计工作室声明：我们在任何设计或生产流程中都不使用人工智能

我们写的字母并不是抽象的形状。它们是经过千年演变过程的结果。像一根接力棒，经过百代传递，同时承载着每一代人的影响。

三千五百年前的某一天，有人在他们工作的矿山砂岩上刮刻了一幅图画。也许那是夏末某个缓慢、炎热的日子，或者外面风在吹起沙砾。也许他们在听凿子敲击岩石的叮当声，那声音在朋友们的谈笑声中回荡。他们刻画的图画是牛头的简单素描——也许是他们自己的牲畜，正等着他们回家。他们知道人们今天仍会谈论它吗？

在他们的语言中，牛的词是aleph，这幅图画代表了这个词的第一个音素a。从那时到现在，无数其他的手以自己的方式改变了这个牛头标记的形状，直到它完全无法辨认，这头动物几乎被遗忘。但这个字母依然存在：它是A。

在你现在阅读的字体中，A的形状并不对称。它的左侧和横杠较细，而右侧较粗，其“脚”扩展成了衬线。这也是某个人的工作，早在那条演变链的很久以前。

在古罗马，右手持平刷，作家如果在开始和结束时使用一个短的水平划动，可以画出更干净的线条；这就是衬线的起源：#footnote-catich。而他们手腕在旋转刷子以始终面向书写方向时并不舒适，所以他们会觉得保持一个角度更容易，画出不同粗细的笔画——向下和向右拉时更粗。我们的字母至今仍保留这种笔画变化。那位书写者是否知道，他们的创意会比他们的文明更持久？

当我们把设计工作交给生成式人工智能时，我们也就将过程中的人性因素剔除了。当我们要求Midjourney画一头牛时，它不会想到家。ChatGPT永远不会发明新的书法技法：https://undercase.xyz/custom/a-guide-to-sinistral-hand，因为它没有手腕去感受不适。一个能屏蔽我们劳动摩擦的工具很有吸引力，但如果我们不体验这种摩擦，我们将永远无法改变作品。

我们使用的书写，作为我们文化的基础，是一种我们无法完全理解的、古老的过程的结果。我们凭什么决定这个过程已经结束？凭什么说发明和人类的投入已经完成，从现在起，每一个字母都只能是对已有内容的混合创作？

人工智能工具把现实看作一个有限的数据集，数据更新至大约2021年：就像柏拉图洞穴墙上的影子。现在它们非常擅长制作影子木偶，但它们无法看到墙外的世界。

如果我们允许这些工具决定我们的视觉文化，我们就必须接受，它将被机器固定化，这些机器把数十亿网页等同于人类存在的总和。我不接受这种观点。我们怎么敢仅仅因为某些内容在训练数据中代表性不足，就抛弃无数传统、人物、思想和细微差别？

好字体永远不够。正如我们永远需要新的音乐和书籍一样，我们也永远需要新的字体来表达我们不断变化的世界观。但除此之外，还有一些语言几乎没有现有字体支持。还有一些文化对排版的体验，只是从钥匙孔里瞥见的一角。人工智能永远不会为他们打开这扇门：没有足够的训练数据。没有一个能够支持和鼓励新设计师，拥有新想法和本地专业知识的繁荣字体行业，这个门永远不会打开。如果人工智能的市场份额过大，这扇门就会永远关闭。

我成为字体设计师不是为了名声或法拉利。这是一份缓慢、艰难、不可靠的工作。你可以靠它谋生，但很可能无法维持生计。

我成为字体设计师是因为我在乎字体，也因为我希望把排版的景观留给后人时比我接触到的更好。出于这个原因以及其他许多原因，这家字体公司在设计或生产过程中不使用人工智能。人工智能也许是一条风景优美、平坦无阻的小径，但它不会通向我们追寻的目标。它通向的只能是一片该死的沙漠。

我们的作品来自于人类之手。一直如此。永远如此。

来自人类之手。：/article/from-human-hands

The letters we write with are not abstract shapes. They are the result of a millennia-long process of evolution. A baton, passed down through a hundred generations, and carrying with it the influence of every one of them.

One day, three and a half thousand years ago, someone scratched a picture into the sandstone of the mine where they worked. Maybe it was one of those slow, hot days in late summer, or perhaps the wind was blowing grit around outside. Maybe they listened to the clink of their chisel on the rocks, to its echo over the voices of their friends. The picture they carved was a simple sketch of an ox’s head — maybe their own animal, waiting for them back home. Did they know people would still talk about it today?

The word for ox, in their language, was aleph, and the picture represented the first sound of that word, a. Between then and now, countless other hands changed the shape of that ox-head mark as they wrote it in their own way, until it became unrecognisable, the animal all but forgotten. But the letter remains: it is A.

In the typeface you’re reading now, the shape of A is not symmetrical. Its left side and crossbar are thin, while its right side is thick, and its ‘feet’ are widened into serifs. This too was someone’s work, long ago in that chain of evolution.

In ancient Rome, holding a flat brush in the right hand, a writer could make a cleaner line if they began and ended with a short horizontal flick; this was the origin of the serif.：#footnote-catich And their wrist was less comfortable rotating the brush to always face its direction of travel, so they would have found it easier to hold at one angle, making strokes of different widths — thicker when pulling it downwards and to the right. Our letters still feature this same stroke modulation today. Did the signwriter know their idea would outlast their civilisation?

When we turn design over to generative AI, we remove the human element from the process. When we ask Midjourney to draw an ox, it does not think of home. ChatGPT will never invent a new calligraphy technique,：https://undercase.xyz/custom/a-guide-to-sinistral-hand because it has no wrists to feel uncomfortable. A tool that shields us from the friction of the work is compelling, but if we don’t experience the friction, we will never change the work.

The writing we use, the very substrate of our culture, is the result of a process older than we can comprehend. Who are we to decide that process is finished? That the time of invention and human input is done, and every letter created from now on should be a remix of what came before?

AI tools perceive reality as a finite set of data, up-to-date as of about 2021: the shadows on the wall of Plato’s Cave. Right now they are very good at making shadow puppets, but they cannot see the world outside.

If we allow these tools to dictate our visual culture, we must accept that it will be vitrified by machines which consider a few billion webpages equivalent to the sum total of human existence. I don’t accept that. How dare we abandon so many countless traditions and people and ideas and nuances, simply because they are under­represented in the training data?

There are not enough good typefaces. Just as we will always need new music and new books, we will also always need new type to express our ever-changing perspective on the world. But beyond that, there are languages which barely a fraction of current typefaces support. There are cultures whose experience of typography is a glimpse through a keyhole. AI will never open the door for them: there is not enough training data. And without a thriving type industry, able to support and encourage new designers with new ideas and local expertise, there never will be. If AI’s market share gets too big, the door stays shut forever.

I did not become a type designer for the fame or the Ferraris. It’s a slow, difficult, unreliable job. You can make a living from it, but there’s a good chance you won’t.

I became a type designer because I care about type, and because I want to leave the landscape of typography better than I found it. For that reason and many others, this foundry does not use AI anywhere in our design or production processes. AI might be a scenic path with no hills or hindrances, but it does not lead to the goal we’re chasing. It leads to a fucking desert.

Our work is from human hands. Always has been. Always will be.

From human hands.：/article/from-human-hands