Modular Typography

According to W. Kunz each letter has a distinctive structure defined by the intersection of its stroke and not by its attributes (bold, roman, italic, sans serif, serif, etc). Our Latin alphabet is code based on human conventions in which the relationship between letters is fundamental, as the intrinsic visual quality of each character depends on the context where it is placed.

Taking in consideration Kunt’s analysis I designed a new series of symbols (upper-case only), which differs from Kunt’s ones for the structure of the letters C, I, G, O, Q, R, S and Y. Afterwards I set different variables to alter the relationship between the component of each sign and generate new alphabets. In the end I analysed different ways to visually represent the transition from the first alphabet to the last one. 

Dot by Dot

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The term type colour refers to the overall balance of type to white space, regardless of the shade of the text. It is related to the inherent blackness of a letter, which is affected by factors such as the width of strokes relative to its width and the orientation of strokes when present. This blackness may vary across different letter-shapes of the same weight of a typeface as much as across different typefaces. For this reason it defines the letter itself. This principle is very well abridge in this famous quote by Adrian Frutiger: “Type is either black or white”. At the same time the blackness of a letter influences the flow of a page since it has a huge impact on the visual tone of a mass of text on a page. The blacker the letters of a typeface are, the stronger is its type colour and its predominance in comparison with other typefaces. Taking a modular typeface (in this case the one designed for the Stedelijk Museum by Wim Crouwel in 1968) we can say that the blackness of a letter depends on how many black units are used to construct it. Following this principle I turned the letters and the typeface into a mass of black blocks for which I decided to print two specimen posters in the letterpress workshop. The connection with ink, metal lead and letterpress was ineluctable. Since the number of square dingbats was not sufficient I had to set and print one line of text at the time and redesign the grid I was using twice in order to adapt it to the needs of both posters. Due to time limitations, I could not print this booklet in letterpress too as planned. The very same Wim Crouwel once said: “You cannot do better design with a computer, but you can speed up your work enormously”.

Dot by Dot

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Pass-U by Marcus Leis Allion / Undt

‘Morrissey by Autobahn’ is a typeface tributed to the song ‘There is a light that never goes out’ by The Smiths. “The shape of the typeface is based on the principle of ‘interference’: a phenomenon in which two waves superimpose to form a resultant wave of greater or lower amplitude. Interference effects can be observed with all types of waves like light and sound. ‘Morrissey by Autobahn’ is a visualisation of both light (the title of the song) and sound (Morrissey singing) interfering.”

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