# New wave generator

Spaced capitals, one heavy word thrown across the sheet, your photo as a coarse gritty halftone, flat spots that overprint and hairlines through it all.

Open the generator: https://morph.ogeny.app/new-wave/

## Design choices

- **Wide letterspacing** (`type.wide-tracking`): Airy, generously spaced letters, usually capitals. Set by “Wide letterspacing”. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/wide-letterspacing/
- **Rotated & vertical setting** (`type.rotated`): Lines set at angles, stacked or running vertically. Set by “Rotated type”. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rotated-and-vertical-setting/
- **Diagonal axis** (`layout.diagonal`): Composition driven by tilted axes and oblique movement. Set by “Diagonal axis”. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/diagonal-axis/
- **Halftone & Ben-Day dots** (`surface.halftone`): Dot screens made visible. Set by “Halftone & Ben-Day dots”. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/halftone-and-ben-day-dots/
- **Photocopy & distress** (`surface.photocopy`): Xerox degradation, toner, torn and pasted edges. Set by “Photocopy & distress”. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/photocopy-and-distress/
- **Limited spot colours** (`color.limited-spot`): Two or three flat inks. Set by “Limited spot colours”. Measured on the opening picture, from 0 to 1: colours besides the ground (each on 1% of the picture or more) 1 → 7. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/limited-spot-colours/
- **Rules & bars** (`ornament.rules-bars`): Thick bars, lines and dots as structural accents. Set by “Rules & bars”. Measured on the opening picture, from 0 to 1: long thin shapes 10 → 11. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rules-and-bars/
- **Treated photography** (`image.treated-photo`): Duotone, high-contrast or posterised photographs. Set by “Treated photography”. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/treated-photography/
- **Broken grid** (`layout.broken-grid`): A grid is implied and then deliberately violated or deconstructed. Always. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/broken-grid/
- **Collage & layering** (`layout.collage`): Overlapping fragments, cut-outs and stacked planes. Always. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/collage-and-layering/
- **Grotesque & neo-grotesque** (`type.grotesque`): Neutral, rational sans: Akzidenz-Grotesk, Helvetica, Univers. Always. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/grotesque-and-neo-grotesque/
- **Extreme scale contrast** (`space.scale-contrast`): Very large against very small elements, for drama and order. Always. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/extreme-scale-contrast/
- **Misregistration & overprint** (`surface.misregistration`): Inks slightly out of register; transparent overprints. Always. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/misregistration-and-overprint/

## How it works

- One word tracked from margin to margin, one heavy word thrown across the sheet at the working angle, and a real photo as a coarse black print inside cut discs and slanted blocks. Flat spots overprint it and hairlines run through everything.

It never does:

- Gradients, shadows, drawn imagery, and any arrangement or wording taken from a particular poster.

## Controls

- `word` Wide letterspacing (default "FIELD"): The spaced word, tracked from margin to margin. Left as “FIELD”, each variation picks its own; empty leaves it out.
- `thrown` Rotated type (default "SHIFT"): The heavy word thrown across the sheet. Left as “SHIFT”, each variation picks its own; empty leaves it out.
- `slant` Diagonal axis (0–24, default 12): The slant of the thrown word and the band, in degrees. The seed chooses which way it leans.
- `screen` Halftone & Ben-Day dots (7–20, default 9): How coarse the screen is: the distance between its dots, in thousandths of the sheet’s width.
- `grit` Photocopy & distress (0–1, default 0.6): How badly it is copied. Low keeps clean round dots; high breaks them into dry specks, flecks and streaks.
- `spot` Limited spot colours (0–1, default 0.8): How much flat colour overprints the sheet: from black alone, through the band, the bar and the disc, to the block as well. Measured on the opening picture, from 0 to 1: colours besides the ground (each on 1% of the picture or more) 1 → 7.
- `ornament` Rules & bars (0–1, default 0.75): How many small bars, dots and fine rules sit in the empty corners. Measured on the opening picture, from 0 to 1: long thin shapes 10 → 11.
- `mass` Treated photography (0.2–0.8, default 0.55): How much of the sheet the print takes.
- `movement` What moves (slide | drift | hairlines; default slide): What slides over the loop. The print is never screened again: it stands still or moves whole.

## About Swiss Punk / New Wave Typography

New wave typography began as a rebellion inside the Swiss school in the late 1960s. It kept the grotesque and the grid, then opened one word across the page, crowded the next, set lines at an angle and layered enlarged halftone film with rules and bars.

This generator draws that sheet. One word is tracked from margin to margin; a second, much heavier, is thrown across it at the working angle. Your photo becomes a coarse black print, like a bad photocopy, cut into discs and slanted blocks and repeated enlarged. Your photo stays in your browser.

The print is worked out once and then stays still, so the band, the word and the hairlines slide over it slowly. You choose the words, the slant, how coarse and how gritty the print is, how much colour, how many ornaments and how much of the sheet the print takes. Everything is vector.

Swiss Punk / New Wave Typography in Stylogeny (1968–1990): https://stylogeny.com/styles/new-wave-typography/

## Recipe

```json
{
  "tool": "new-wave",
  "v": 1,
  "seed": 3,
  "format": "portrait",
  "params": {
    "word": "FIELD",
    "thrown": "SHIFT",
    "slant": 12,
    "screen": 9,
    "grit": 0.6,
    "spot": 0.8,
    "ornament": 0.75,
    "mass": 0.55,
    "movement": "slide"
  },
  "palette": "new-wave-typography"
}
```