(On the top you see the final TrueType font whereas the image below shows the very first version)
The font was to be simple, clear, neutral. It should consist of unambiguous characters with good readability. Moreover the typeface should work fine in small point-sizes as well as in huge format - on the screen, in print and sculpture.
Because of different reasons a classic commercial font is not an option: First, because of the installation’s aspect of Zeitgeist - on one hand the installation should be timeless and matter-of-fact on the other hand it should suit a contemporary feeling for aesthetics (A font like Helvetica, Avenir or Blender are overused, impersonal and loaded with associations). A self-made font can be designed and adjusted to one’s actual and desired needs and does not involve any licensing or costs. An individual Type is therefore very important as it is the element on which all other designs base on. I decided to design an edgy font to get some suspenseful differences through varying sizes. Thus it also contains just straight lines and no curves what makes its coordinates easier to translate into different media.
A closer look at the font development shows that I started with more obviously varying shapes that formed a much more diversified face. In small continuous text or viewed from distance the first versions of the character set look too reserved and female though, so that I went on with more uniform and rather blunt letters. Other than that I mainly changed proportions.
To realize the TrueType I used the online application on fontstruct.com. Here you basically build up each character in a pixel-like grid and lets you choose between different modules for this. Finally it offers the possibility to apply ‘filters’ to the whole character set before generating a TrueType. I welcomed that since I could very much need that for easily generating a kind of line patterned font.
Fontstruct has limited features and conversion algorithms so that I needed to retouch the font with a font editor. I used the free software Font Forge for that purpose.