MuirMcNeil. Five. A stencil type system in three geometric contours

Transcription

1 MuirMcNeil Five A stencil type system in three geometric contours

2 MuirMcNeil Five Five is one of a series of stencil type systems published by MuirMcNeil in Constructed from basic geometric segments, Five explores two essential typographic features. Relationships between form and counter form are fundamental to all visual communication processes. In the context of typeface design, readers are able to distinguish one letter from another not solely by means of the shapes of the strokes from which they are made but the formation of the spaces between them. In MuirMcNeil Five, the structure of letterforms is differentiated primarily through exchanges of linear intervals between letters and strokes rather than by means of external profiles alone. Instead of constructing glyphs from a minimal set of strokes in the conventional manner, Five is built around a minimal set of internal spaces throughout. These have been reduced to thin white hairlines in all but the ExtraFat weight, resulting in optimally dense and imposing alphabets. This approach references the linear void spaces of stencil designs such as Josef Albers Kombinations-Schrift, along with those of compressed rectilinear sans serifs from the 1960s such as Compacta, Helvetica Inserat and Impact, faces that were themselves modelled on Walter Haettenschweiler s seminal Schmalfette Grotesk from A second strategy has been explored in MuirMcNeil Five. To facilitate visual differentiation between characters with minimum intervention, the core of the lower case, from baseline to x-height, divides into either two or three horizontal sections. Following principles similar to those used by Walter Ballmer in his logo and lettering designs for Olivetti in 1971, this allows stroke proportions to be modulated more subtly and more naturally than in many constructed types. MuirMcNeil Five is available in OpenType as a display family in three styles each in four bold weights. Kombinations-Schrift: 1920s ABCDEFGabcdefg Schmalfette Grotesk: 1954 ABCDEFGHabcdefgh Compacta: 1963 ABCDEFGHIabcdefgh Impact: 1965 ABCDEFGabcdefgh Olivetti lettering: 1971 Five 02 ABCDEabcdef Five 03 ABCDEabcdef muirmcneil.com 2

3 five 01

4 Five ExtraFat muirmcneil.com 4

5 Five UltraBlack muirmcneil.com 5

6 Five Black muirmcneil.com 6

7 Five ExtraBold muirmcneil.com 7

8 Five 01 Character Set Latin 1 standard character set in Opentype encoding for Macintosh. ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmn opqrstuvwxyz ÄÅÀÃÂÁÉÊËÈÍÎÏÌÖÕ ÓÔÒØŒÚÛÙÜÇÑ Æ áàâäãåæéèêëíìîïó òôöõøœúùûüçñµÿ $& ß ƒ@ ªº % * (){}[]/ !?., :; - #+ ± <=> ~ ˇ^` muirmcneil.com 8

9 five 02

10 Five ExtraFat muirmcneil.com 10

11 Five UltraBlack muirmcneil.com 11

12 Five Black muirmcneil.com 12

13 Five ExtraBold muirmcneil.com 13

14 Five 02 Character Set Latin 1 standard character set in Opentype encoding for Macintosh. ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmn opqrstuvwxyz ÄÅÀÃÂÁÉÊËÈÍÎÏÌÖÕ ÓÔÒØŒÚÛÙÜÇÑ Æ áàâäãåæéèêëíìîïó òôöõøœúùûüçñµÿ $& ß ƒ@ ªº % * (){}[]/ !?., :; - #+ ± <=> ~ ˇ^` muirmcneil.com 14

15 five 03

16 Five ExtraFat muirmcneil.com 16

17 Five UltraBlack muirmcneil.com 17

18 Five Black muirmcneil.com 18

19 Five ExtraBold muirmcneil.com 19

20 Five 03 Character Set Latin 1 standard character set in Opentype encoding for Macintosh. ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmn opqrstuvwxyz ÄÅÀÃÂÁÉÊËÈÍÎÏÌÖÕ ÓÔÒØŒÚÛÙÜÇÑ Æ áàâäãåæéèêëíìîïó òôöõøœúùûüçñµÿ $& ß ƒ@ ªº % * (){}[]/ !?., :; - #+ ± <=> ~ ˇ^` muirmcneil.com 20