Ravensbourne College and design consultancy Johnson Banks have
collaborated to design a "three-dimensional alphabet of alphabets", called Arkitypo.
The idea was to 3D-print an entire alphabet derived from the historical story of how a typeface beginning with the same letter came to be. So, for example, the letter F is from a German typeface called Fraktur, and the letter is extruded from a map of West Germany. "The Arkitypo project came about when one of our clients, Ravensbourne, asked if we were interested in developing a research project to test and showcase the in-house 3D prototyping skills and technology at their site in Greenwich," said Michael Johnson, creative director of Johnson Banks. "So we set ourselves the brief to develop a 3D alphabet of alphabets.
He added: "Each letterform is different, each in turn interprets its own alphabet. For each letter we carried out extensive research, made drawings, built maquettes and did simple 3D visuals on our machines, before handing the ideas over to Ravensbourne's team.
Some of the ideas worked straight away, some needed refining. Some fell apart, some were perfect, but after about six months solid work by December last year the 'alphabet' was ready for the photography you see here."
Some letters were easier than others, says Johnson. "The first dozen or so came quickly. Some were much harder -- either to find an interesting alphabet beginning with 'X' (say), or to find an idea that looked as good in 3D as it did in our heads! We were initially simply drawn to the idea of doing type in three dimensions, and our first experiments were aesthetically driven.
But then we became more interested in each letter telling the
'story' of its alphabet -- so the Courier 'C' is built from typewriter keys, the 'D' is built from DIN, often used for city signage, and so on."
The designs were done in 3D programmes like SketchUp, and then Ravensbourne's 3D team worked with Solidworks, Rhino, Autocad and 3D studio max to create the prototypes, which were then printed using a Dimensions U-Print and a Zcorp 450.
Johnson's favourite? "That's a tough one. I love the simplicity of the 'g' (a 'spectacle g' made to look like spectacles). But then the complexity of the 'H' (built entirely out of company logos designed in Helvetica) is also very alluring."
If you want to see them, and the gallery attached to this post just isn't good enough for you, then you can head on down to Ravensbourne College, where they're now permanently installed, publicly, free of charge.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
