De La Paz · Gallery
Art & film.
Stills, studies, and frames from the work that is not software. Every frame takes an image or a video. The empty ones draw themselves.
The type room.
Fraunces · Four axes · Your hand
A specimen you play. Move across the room for weight, up and down for softness. Scroll fast and the optical size stretches; click the word for the next one from the index.
The press.
Set it · Print it · Keep it
A poster machine. Pick a word from the index, turn the dials, and the press composes a piece with the mark, the type, and a field drawn by hand rules rather than by hand. Every impression is different. Take one, it is yours.
How one gets made.
Five stages · Drag through them
Finished work is the least interesting version of itself. This is one piece at five stages, in order, with what changed and why at each one. Drag the handle, or use the arrows.
The gap between stage three and stage four is where most of the actual decisions live, and it is the stage nobody ever shows.
The kit.
Type · Colour · Motion · Rhythm
The system this whole site is built from, taken apart and left running. Every value here is read live from the page you are on, so nothing can drift out of date: the contrast figures are measured, not claimed, and the easing curves are the exact ones the interface uses. This is the part of design that is engineering.
The scale
One ratio, eight steps. Drag through it and watch where the scale earns its keep: the jumps at the top do the shouting, the steps at the bottom do the reading.
- Step
- —
- Size
- —
- Leading
- —
- Tracking
- —
- Where
- —
The values
Four values, every pairing measured against the current theme. Anything under 4.5 to 1 is not allowed to carry body text, and the badge says so rather than hoping nobody checks.
- Paper—
- Ink—
- Mark—
- Signal—
- Signal, for reading—
The signal is a mark colour, not a reading colour. Anywhere it has to carry words there is a darkened companion, and the row below proves it rather than asserting it.
| Pairing | Ratio | Body | Large |
|---|
The curves
Four curves and nothing else in the entire interface. Press one and it runs on a real element, at the real duration, so you can feel the difference rather than read about it.
The rhythm
Spacing is a scale, not a guess. Every margin on this site is one of these, which is why a page you have never seen still feels like it belongs.
The plotter.
Five series · Drawn live · Vector out
A drawing machine rather than a picture of one. Pick a series, set the density, and watch the pen work: every line you see is a real path, in order, the way a plotter would lay it down. The seed decides everything, so the same number always draws the same piece.
—
What you take away is a vector, not a screenshot. It will scale to a wall, and it will run on an actual pen plotter if you have one.
A note.
How the frames fill
Frames and screenings are editable in the site defaults: give each entry an image URL or a video URL and it plays in place. Until then, each empty frame runs a small generative drawing of its own.
LewisDe La Paz
Independent practice