LEFT: LINETO.COM was designed and developed by Jürg Lehni with Cornel Windlin. The website features a sophisticated font rendering engine that is fed with various sources of text and color. These sources are either written specifically for onsite display or automatically retrieved from daily newsfeeds. The Lineto projects “Lego font creator” and “Rubik maker” were created in 2000 as interactive type specimens; RIGHT: ANALOG INFORMATION is an installation piece. The only connection between the two computers is through integrated speakers and microphones. One computer reads a text with one of the default MAC OS synthesized voices; the other listens through a voice recognition software, writing the text. They go back and forth resulting in a poetry generation system that works like chinese whispers.

Jürg Lehni Latin Name: Cralus Philipus Age: 27 www.scratchdisk.com, www.scriptographer.com, www.lineto.com, www.vectorama.org

It’s a new phase for Jürg Lehni: The Zurich, Switzerland-based designer just started a four-month stint working for Sony’s design research lab in Tokyo. Up until now, he’s spent a good chunk of his time on self-initiated projects—exploring the relationships among design, technology, and communication. “I like systems and their limitations,” he says. “I like exploring possibilities, thinking about tools, and the way we use them.”

Thus far, Lehni has garnered a good deal of attention for his inventions, which often recombine and misuse existing things to create something new. One of his most notable projects is a graffiti output device called Hektor. Picture a spray-paint can sitting in a harness that’s connected to a motorized pulley system. A computer calls the shots through an attached circuit board, telling the system how to create a given design. Hektor’s wall-sized creations have shown up everywhere from art installations to magazine covers. Lehni controls Hektor using Scriptographer, a plug-in he created for Adobe Illustrator that expands the software’s functions.

“I was looking for a way of creating a dirty printer, one that unifies human imprecision with technology,” he says. “I wanted to change the landscape of graphic design a little by replacing one element in the desktop publishing chain.” In general, he looks for ways that technology can increase, rather than limit, aesthetic possibilities.

While he’s been playing with computers since age 7, Lehni’s formal training includes studying interactive design at Hyper- Werk in Basel, Switzerland, and completing both bachelor and master’s degrees at Ecole Cantonale D’Art de Lausanne (ECAL). “Jürg is one of the pathfinders who will help us turn new technology into new media,” says François Rappo, head of the Visual Communication Department at ECAL. “He has a perfect capacity to translate technology into visual design, as well as to understand technology as design and meaning.” Now Lehni just has to decide what the future holds: a focus on client work, artistic pursuits, or a marriage of the two.
Michelle Taute