May 30, 2007 4:00 AM PDT
Alphabet changes color of communication
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For 35 years, between stints as a doctor, a real estate agent and a pizza maker at the Woodstock concert in 1994, Freedman has been working on Kromofons--an innovative alphabet in which the 26 English letters are represented solely by individual colors--waiting for technology to catch up with him.
And now, thanks to the Internet, the ubiquity of color monitors, Microsoft Word plug-ins and his being able to launch a Kromofons-based e-mail system, Freedman thinks he is finally ready.
Imagine getting an e-mail whose text is not the familiar black letters on a white background, but instead a series of colored rectangles.
That's how Kmail, the Kromofons e-mail system, works. Using a translation key, Kmail recipients can piece together what a message says, letter by letter, word by word.
That's how it would work at the beginning, and Kmail is largely the Trojan horse that could help people learn to adopt Kromofons and be able to read the new alphabet. Freedman's hope is that after not too much exposure to Kromofons, either in a Kmail message, or in some other form, you would begin to be able to read the alphabet the way you would with normal letters. And once that happens, he predicts, a whole new world of communications can open up, as words can be embedded in images just about anywhere.
It may seem confusing, but it's actually very simple, in concept at least. The letter "a" is represented by a bright yellow, "b" is a light blue, "c" a pale pink, "d" is grey, "e" is orange and so on.
The system presents some problems because the colors of some letters are similar to the colors of others. So the first few times a person looks at the translation key, it can be confusing, but the more time spent with it, the more it begins to make sense.
That confusion would most likely plague adults, of course. Kids are more likely to catch on much faster.
"Children really pick this up very quickly," said Tony Janson, the co-author of History of Art, who has spent a significant amount of time learning and thinking about Kromofons. "They start using the colors for different shapes and writing messages to each other, and they have a blast with it."
James Bennett, the dean of interactive media at the International Academy of Design and Technology, in Tampa, Fla., agrees.
"Children are going to learn a lot quicker, because they're little sponges," Bennett said. "Kids will (say), 'Yeah, this is cool,' and they will learn stuff just because it's cool."
For Freedman, Kromofons--for which he has applied for a patent--is much more than a kid's toy.
He sees Kromofons as nothing less than something that can change the way people think.
Freedman pointed out that for the entire history of the written word, humans have been reading in black and white. Now, he argued, people will begin to read in color, both in static words and animated phrases.
"That's going to change the way you think," Freedman said, "because knowledge that's coming in is going to be processed differently."
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I just think he's someone who thought up a fun idea while in an altered state and, as with most brownie eaters, thinks the idea was much more clever than it is.
Dropped a little acid, did we? That explains a lot....
As this is a problem why? Unless the only way you "write" is with a color-coded keyboard on a computer, there is no workable application for this that people would adopt enmasse. Why on earth does he think this will someday become prevalent?
26 UPPER case letters
30 special characters !@#$%^&*()_+-={}[]\|:";'?,./
You would need 82 different colours. You may be able to reduce that by making the capitals a different size. Then you could reduce it further by adding a shape to the colours. square for the first half of the alphabet and round for the second half. Indeed, if you made all the letters different shapes, you could reduce that to just one colour.
Oh yeah, we did that already.
We (KromoSapiens) have been using it in stain glass, art, jewelry, fashion, signs, rugs, furniture, even body painting at Mardi Gras, Fantasy Fest, and on Ozzfest for years.
And spreading it by word of mouth.
We just weren't ready to tell the world,
until there were easy tools for its use.
I am also very colorblind myself.
That is why it works.
It needed a colorblind eye.
So, the next time you look at a comic book,
check out the backgrounds,
when you see a billboard with large blocks of color, in the design,
or even the 4 color squares at the bottom of
some very popular TV shows,
you have to now wonder,
am I missing something ?
Something that may have been there
for a long time already.
May I suggest a few more uses for those that think it such a lame idea. There are places that letters just don't seem to fit right and colors are already being used.
Automotive Pinstriping, for that matter NASCAR car-ads are hard to read in letters at 200+ miles but colors ? Balloons for your next party, Floral Pattern Landscaping, Hot Air Balloons, Light Shows for concerts, Laser painting of the clouds, and my all time favorite - Read my Lips(tick) !
I am sure if you look around you at this very moment you will see Kromofons in use, you just did not notice it before.
So before you dismiss an idea, that in 5 minutes you could not have given much thought to. Try opening your mind just a little. After all, that is the purpose of the exercise to begin with.
Oh, and as far as the punctuation goes, we are not getting rid of any thing, we are adding to the possibilities. Use the current punctuation as you see fit, or create new forms of punctuation, or expression, by shaping the words, sentences and even the entire page.
The standard alphabet as we know it had no punctuation for about the first 400 years of its use. In fact, there were times when it was written in a continuus flow - right to left, then left to right, then right to left.
And we have not even begun the discussion of its impact on Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Cartoons, and Animation in general, let alone the new mediums of expression that KF can spring firth by combining it with these other mediums.
Open your mind. Try actually reading it, and you will find it WILL CHANGE the way that you think, not what you think about, but the WAY that you think.
And wait until your first dream, in it.
LOOKOUT !
I guess that is it for now.
Thanks for listening,
Lee@kfons.com
- synaesthesia
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by mwh1950
June 4, 2007 4:59 AM PDT
- my daughter already has colours asigned to days and months, and I know lots of people have colours attached in their perception to letters and numbers too. how will this work with them?
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