WHAT THE FONT?volume one

1

WHAT THE FONT?volume one

1

Every two weeks, the Art Directors at TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris - Johannesburg get together

to inspire one another. During one of these sessions, a challenge was put forward.

Design your own typeface or font. And three weeks later, these were the results.

WHAT THE FONT? volume one. Enjoy.

Name: Choc Star

Designer: Justin Wright

Combining Freud’s views on anal retentiveness

and the Egyptians beliefs that cats are gods,

we naturally arrived at the Chocolate Starfi sh

font. It’s natural versatility made it perfect for

thin italic, textured, bold and bitmapped...

allowing the user to achieve more expression

in their chosen media.

Even with the controversial banning in some

parts of Germany, we believe it’s a font for all

to use – the font for the modern family.

Title: ALFAbet

Designer: Jacque Moodley

The love of Puns

and Alfa Romeos

Title: White on white

Designer: Bruce Harris

(with the loving help of Jason Murison)

There isn’t any crazy concept here so stop

looking. All I wanted to do was design

a typeface that I thought was nice and

would be proud to show my mother, so I

showed her last night and she loved it.

It also helps that white is my favourite

colour and I like to punish myself by

sitting for hours on end in the studio and

on photoshop. Hope you like it.

Title: “Recycle Bitches”

Designer: Coenraad Grebe

This particular font is based around the

thought that everything should be recycled

/ re-used / re-appropiated / re-looked /

re-engineered. Also it serves as a call to

action and a rally cry of sorts. This served

as my inspiration to re-look existing fonts

(both designer and common), with the intent

of borrowing, stealing and mashing them

up to create something new, if not original.

So, thanks to Helvetica, Gill Sans, Times,

Rockwell and M/M Paris for allowing me

(not intentionally) to rally the troops.

Title: Zip It

Designer: Erika Spethmann

The client in reception who

forgot to pull up his zip…

I saw an ‘O’…

and the rest just followed.

Title: Clip Art

Designer: Graeme van Jaarsveld

Working in an offi ce environment

I wanted to create a font that

related to that, and that had a

different touch to the normal bland

kind of look. The look I went for

was almost that of a darkroom/

photographic kind of look.

Title: Pins and Needles

Designer: Ilze Venter

My inspiration was the creation of

something new out of bits and pieces of

fabric, scraps and anything I could fi nd in

my cupboards. When people talk they cut,

add, pin and mix words together to make

a sentence. It refl ects my love for making

things by hand.

Title: Disco

Designer: Jacx

In the light of the festivities and all

the parties in and around the agency

I found it fi t to do a Disco font. Using

the mirror ball as my main inspiration,

(taking me back to my bedroom DJ days)

I created a font which represents a bit of

my past. So being the party animal that I

am it just seemed like a perfect fi t.

I’m a 80’s baby after all. Lol.

Name: Obession

Designer: Shelley & Nadja

To show the love-affair women have

with shoes, we turned it into a typeface.ww

Title: A Type of Font

Designer: Jens Henkel

A font made up of a continuous story.

Each letter leading onto the next.

A type making up a type,

while telling a story.

Title: Desktop Font

Designer: Adam Weber

This typeface is inspired by the

patterns and shapes made by folders

and fi les that clutter our mac desktops.

It is based on the Din font family and

was created using photoshop,

screen savers and command-shift-3.

Title: Eat Your Words

Designer: Jodi Smith & Laura Grobler

Say what you mean or

eat what you say!

Name: 6MM

Designer: Kerry Moralee

My goal whilst creating the 6mm font was

to turn completely unaesthetic items such

as 6mm nuts and varied 6mm bolts into

elegant letters making up a font without

messing with their original form. So what

you’re seeing is a font made from only

6mm bolts and nuts, that you fi nd at

any hardware store, assembled without

perversion of their true form into a font.

Name: “PIN-UP”

Designer: Kursten Meyer

I pin up all my ideas, layouts,

inspiration, references and scamps

on my pin board.

It’s something I use every day

and therefore was the inspiration

behind my font.

Name: “Pegs”

Designer: Lucas & Sarel

The font was inspired

by a lady we saw

hanging clothes onto the

washing line using pegs.

Name: “Marv. The Font”

Designer: Marvin Zwambila

Inspired by my character in terms of the

properties a wire holds. For starters it can be

bent to make almost any shape, can handle

electricity and of course is straight and hard.

Because of these properties wire is often stolen

off fences, train cables and other areas. So wire

is an essential part of our society, just like me.

P.S. Apologies to the passenger trains that

ran late. Find solace in knowing the wire

was used to uplift a poor individual.

Name: Summoned

Designer: Melanie Moore

My font went through many stages

before reaching the fi nal idea.

It was inspired by naughty boys

who take the warning label on deodorant

cans as an instruction manual for fun.

Name: 2D

Designer: Natalie le Roux

This typeface was inspired by CMYK and photography. CMYK is a layered printing process, which uses four inks (Cyan,

Magenta, Yellow and Black) to create realistic images onto a 2D paper surface. Photography is a way of capturing and

representing reality on a 2D surface. I have included some of my cameras and the overlapping CMYK effect on the board

to depict the inspiration.

Technically, the font is designed by layering CMYK strips across each other to form characters. Because all three

C, M and Y never intersect with each other to create black,I have placed black and grey photographs behind them,

to give some sense of light and depth to the typeface.The photographs used are some of my own and some of my

favourites. Another element of the typeface is the useof right triangles, which have been sliced off on one strip and

replaced somewhere else on each character to add some interest and form serifs and geometric curves.

Name: My Wire Blocks

Designer: Pieter Steyn

This font is based on the 6 fonts most commonly

used by us in the agency including Arial, Futura

and Myriad and Trebuchet. I used a 3D effect in

Illustrator, and made the wire/block shapes. Later

in InDesign I factorised the letters. I only used the

block Capitals as they represent the building and

construction TBWA\ is undergoing at the new

building, as well as the indifference between the

nation, there should be no difference between upper

and lower case or class (in an absolute world).

Name: Rock Art

Designer: Tebogo

Disrupting rock art into a font...

Why because the khoi people used rock

art to communicate and tell stories,

so I designed rock art font for people

to use and communicate and tell

interesting stories.

Name: Dirty Words

Designer: Thereza Grala

All the things a person says during

their day that they wish they’d never said.

Name: Scaff

Designer: Shelley, Nadja & Raff

Inspired by moving into a building

that’s half-complete and the

scaffolding that surrounds us.

Name: 1810 Extra Bold

Designer: Michael Muller

As creatives we spend many hours brainstorming, writing and crafting thoughts and ideas so that they hopefully come to fruition and ultimately a crescendo of inner satisfaction.

Most of these ideas start out as scamps and thoughts scribed by the hand of the creative in bursts of optimism – the belief you could have possibly cracked something that will make

your CD smile and your peers green with envy.

This very handwriting, that is the beginning of the physical formation of ideas is as unique to everyone as our fi ngerprints and through analysis can very accurately reveal who we are.

And who we are is predominantly a combination of life experience.

That being said, life experience and the fi ngerprint it leaves in the form of handwriting coupled with the love of my work are the inspiration for my typeface

1810 Extra Bold.

The brown paper element represents the reams of paper that I consume trying to crack ideas and the typeface is an adaption of my handwriting. The name 1810 Extra Bold is made up of two parts, my birthday – 18 October and the Extra Bold is a refl ection of my personality.

Name: Tape

Designer: Wihan Meerholz

All the best memories and most classic times

are kept on the most classic thing, video tapes.

They tell a story and could even spell things out for us.

Name: Semiotic Typeface

Designer: Katleho Mofolo

My typeface is inspired by contours, semiotics1, human signs and contortionists. Everyday we consciously and subconsciously see signs

wherever we go, in and around cities and towns, on traffi c lights, toilets, gates etc. These street signs or signs are visuals read as text subliminally

and help communicate a range of commands, warnings, clues and sometimes indicate future change. Everyone succumbs to these signs

and whenever one defi es them danger occurs e.g. accidents. I see them as fascinating signage because even illiterate people can understand what they convey unlike the ordinary code of plain wording. I fi nd the

shapes that contortionists transform themselves into when performing as extraordinary exhibitions to demonstrate human body capability. I think contortionists literally prove that limits are only as real as the

mind comprehends them to be. The forms and shapes that they turn themselves into physically articulate man power in a different dimension

of body art, and through the contorting of the their bodies I perceive art. I decided to name my typeface SEMIOTIC because of the study of semiotics which explains the importance of sign conventions and sign

theory to mankind. I believe the study of symbols, codes, indexes, signs and signifi ers assists to simplify communication for better understanding

about different or foreign behavioral patterns.