Type for Type

“Not since the days of Gutenburg have we seen typography undergo as many changes as we do now”, says Pentagram’s Luke Powell in the foreword for the new, ‘Type for Type’ book published by Viction:ary. With typeface design and type modification becoming increasingly seen as almost elemental in the field of branding and identity design, the book aims to platform a wide range methods and approaches to this discipline. The book contains lots of visual examples of bespoke type design in real application, plus articles and statements as to how this work is impacting on the subject of graphic design.

There is also a feature on the identity design for the LCC ‘Beyond 2001: New Horizons’ exhibition by GMD Senior Lecturer, Tim Hutchinson. The exhibition celebrated the Kubrick anniversary and Hutchinson’s research into the film discovered a ‘lost’ typeface that Kubrick specified to be used for the on-screen representation of the HAL 9000 computer. After finding a few printed scraps of low resolution type specimens, Hutchinson observed the original type DNA and digitally re-imagined the typeface to build a complete working font called ‘THD_Sentient’. The typeface was then applied to all promotional and information applications in the exhibition.