I found an interesting debate on Youtube between two robots, Sophia and Han, hosted by the developer Dr Ben Goertzel. The dialogue was comedic, terrifying and thought provoking; bear in mind this was from 2018, these technologies have rapidly progressed since then. I thought the three way conversation gave me an opportunity to experiment with formatting voice, using placement and typeface to express difference. I knew immediately that I wanted two typefaces; one human and one robot; this distinction would make it clearer to the reader who was speaking and the tone they used.

I used Metaflop to make my own robotic typeface; accentuating angular shapes, enlarging counters, and reducing contrast and weight. This seemed to work well, although someone suggested in a later crit that the descenders were too low and made the leading seem too tight. Then I had the task of finding a human font; I think I didn't spend enough time researching this, and thought Helvetica would do the trick. My tutor noted that Helvetica, a san serif, universal font perhaps isn't the most human font there is; and that I should look into a semi-sans such as Rotis, for a softer look. My argument was that I didn't want a typeface that would distract  the reader from the custom robot font; I thought neutrality would be the best route. But are humans neutral? I think I wanted Ben to be the mediator between these two robotic polarities. 

I knew from the get go that I wanted to mirror the video within the formatting; Sophia on the left (left aligned), Ben in the middle (centred) and Han on the right (right aligned). Originally I justified Ben's speech to have a neater look, however this made the text coming in from the right and left too out of balance. My tutor said that the ragged edges on both sides of Ben's text, especially on the long paragraphs, was uncomfortable to read, and actually some sort of alignment would be best.

The first draft of the project seemed bland and not contrasting enough, so I decided to tweak a few areas, which ended in a total redesign. I inserted colour blocks and highlight character styles to create colourful, dynamic compositions; using colours from the 2d barcode on the front cover. This turned out to be too much on the eye, my peers actually preferring the original, 'stripped code' look. 

If I were to redo it again, I'd follow the advice set in my tutorials and fix the small inside margin, centre Ben's text and find a more human font, and feature the last image on one page instead of double spread.