name

Christa Jonathan (christa)

country

australia

university

Monash University

department

Graphic Design

university address

900 Dandenong Road
3145 Caulfield East

university country

australia

url

http://www.artdes.monash.edu.au

id

0000853

title

3000: ByNumbers

professor(s)

Gene Bawden

rank

-

tags

type design typography

year of making

2008

uploaded

2009-02-10 20:02:25

3000:ByNumbers observes and explores the city of Melbourne typographically, resulting in a typeface derived from architectural numerals found within Melbourne CBD. This project aims to challenge one’s familiarity of the city, numerals, and digital font design.

Numbers has always been put second to alphabets in typeface design, and with this font I decided to turn the table around. The architectural numerals I found within Melbourne CBD were my starting point and the centrepoint of ByNumbers. I decided to trace their forms without smoothing them out, because I believe these flaws and ‘mistakes’ add character. As a consequence, the characters support different and distinctive styles. The challenge for me was not to design all the glyphs within a particular style, but rather to find out how to make all these different styles work together as a font.

The font is presented in many forms, including a large scrabble set and a book in which three stories are typeset in ByNumbers, 9/13pt.