Typography
Tenant
/// Overview
An uppercase stencil display alphabet where every letter lives in the same cell.
/// The Challenge
Design an uppercase display alphabet from scratch: 27 letters, numerals and signs that read as one family. Mariana Buitrago and I started with photographs of letters hidden in objects and buildings, then drew three alphabets by hand until one idea held.
/// The System
Everything comes from one cell. Each letter is a stem, a set of rounded modules and a thin cut of air between them, which is what makes it a stencil. Most letters share the same width and nearly the same stem, so the alphabet reads as one piece. It's called Tenant because every letter rents the same cell.
/// The Process
Found letters became pencil sketches, then a marker alphabet, then a grid on millimetre paper, then vectors. For this case I measured the final outlines, redrew the cell and drew a set of illustrations around the type: capsule towers built with the letter's own proportions.