But this is a ‘code’ designed by an artist, a painter whose trade specialises in blending, grazing across and nuancing surfaces. They run counter to the central concept of legibility through contrast and solidity. Fading effects pose a difficulty on a font. If I introduced such a fade-out I could see a way of identifying t and x. An exclamation mark? Add a positive ‘cap’, fading out from the top line. If terminals could be applied, I could combine a dot to identify j and this could also give me i and a full stop. They also gave me r with its finial, referred to endearingly as an ‘ear’. to differentiate ascenders and descenders. Terminals, or finials are a visually satisfying characteristic of American Typewriter, those comma-like flourishes at the ends of some letters. However, to separate b d p and q from each other, I would need to provide further information some element of ‘positivity’.

Open counters could indicate the presence of: c h k m n s u v w y Some of these gave a particularly striking arrowhead pointing in different directions. It is still, to me, the most beautiful and evocative of fonts even though in its current derivation, it is no longer a slab serif.*Įnclosed voids or closed counters provide specific identities for the following lower case letters: a e g o Why choose this? I am of an age when my educational theses, my mailed letters and later the scripts and running schedules I worked to professionally, were all typed either by manual or electronic mechanical typewriters.

I wanted to create a font using American typewriter bold as a foundation. Emphasis on these empty spaces would produce latent characters hidden in clear sight, a notion close to any illusionist’s heart. The importance of ‘negative space’ -the shapes of the gaps or voids created between two or more corporeal elements, is one of the fundamental principles of abstract art and design. My idea was to create my own variation based on the shapes of the negative spaces to create characters by inference. A set of rules and templates to transfer shapes on to A4 sheets would be of little use to me.

Besides, I wanted flexibility of scale so that I could apply a system to my larger scale paintings. I trawled the internet, contemplating a purchase, but incomplete boxes from USA cost upward of £60 as they are now considered collectable.

American typewriter font artwork