FONT DESIGN

Form and Function

Typeface design forces a specific kind of honesty — every decision is structural, every proportion either works or it doesn't. The work here, completed during my MFA in Graphic Design at ArtCenter College of Design, treated original typeface development as both a technical discipline and a conceptual practice: letterforms built from first principles, every decision traced back to a reason.
 

Research drew from type history across European and non-Western traditions, with particular attention to how letterforms carry cultural weight beyond their literal function. The structural touchstones were 1950s Dutch Avant Garde design and the gestural tradition of sign painting — Wim Crouwel's rational grid logic, Herb Lubalin's compression, Piet Zwart and Theo Van Doesburg's constructivist energy, and the vertical and lateral motion of the sign painter's hand informing contrast, weight, and proportion.