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Occupant Modern is Cyrus Highsmith’s exploration of the Didone or modern classification of Latin typefaces. Marie Otsuka drove the design of the italics and assisted with production. Occupant Modern was inspired by Kocho, a high-contrast Mincho-style typeface by the 20th century Japanese graphic designer, Ikko Tanaka, who got his inspiration from the 18th century Italian punchcutter, Giambattista Bodoni.

To Highsmith, this sort of cyclical inspiration echoes the relationships between the eastern and western art throughout history. This includes the 19th century European Impressionists and Ukiyo-e artists, 20th century American animation and Japanese anime, as well as the more recent electroacoustic improvisation (EAI) and Onkyokei movements. It reminds him of the constant feedback loops, interconnection, and underlying patterns discussed in chaos theory.

Minkyoung Kim initiated the concept of feedback as the foundation for the Occupant Modern mini-site, transforming Highsmith’s reflections on cyclical influence into an interactive experience. By turning the knobs in the control panel, users can watch as the changes to Occupant Modern’s weight and width cascade throughout the text. These parameters can also respond to audio input or be automated.

More of Occupant Modern can be seen at occupantfonts.com.

And check out Minkyoung Kim’s website.

Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause and effect that forms a circuit or loop¹. The system can then be said to feed back into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled carefully when applied to feedback systems:

Simple causal reasoning about a feedback system is difficult because the first system influences the second and second system influences the first, leading to a circular argument. This makes reasoning based upon cause and effect tricky, and it is necessary to analyze the system as a whole. As provided by Webster, feedback in business is the transmission of evaluative or corrective information about an action, event, or process to the original or controlling source.²
Karl Johan Åström and Richard M.Murray, Feedback Systems: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers³

from wikipedia

  1. Andrew Ford (2010). “Chapter 9: Information feedback and causal loop diagrams”. Modeling the Environment. Island Press. pp. 99 ff. ISBN 9781610914253. This chapter describes causal loop diagrams to portray the information feedback at work in a system. The word causal refers to cause-and-effect relationships. The word loop refers to a closed chain of cause and effect that creates the feedback. ↩︎

  2. “feedback”. MerriamWebster. Retrieved 1 January 2022. ↩︎

  3. Karl Johan Åström; Richard M. Murray (2008). “§ 1.1: What is feedback?”. Feedback Systems: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers. Princeton University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-4008-2873-9. Online version found here. ↩︎