In the summer of 2005 we developed our own font "Papillion" at the Mainz School of Design. The point of the exercise was to sensitise us to the finer aspects of font design.The result was two drafts of "Papillon" and the legendary "Hoi-Titan" which presents the writings of the font-office.
The Task
We picked 3 sans-serif fonts from a selection of 52. It was of importance to analyze the idiosyncracies of these scripts and to compare and contrast them in order that a new font may emerge.
The first drafts we sketched depicted single letters that were pieced together to display the word: "Hamburgefonts". This specific combination of letters represented the essential proportions and relations which helped us identifying strengths and weaknesses in our design.
With the aid of "Fontlab Studio" we digitalised our analog templates, and could now start working on the details. A task far more complex than anyone of us had suspected.
After four months of counters, flow, spacing and ligatures we arrived at our very own font "Papillon".
"HOI"
During the project our fellow students and we founded the font studio "HOI". After our partners in crime Stefan Bräutigam, Manuel Haugke, Ruwen Kopp and Tobias Röttger each had designed their own font, we joined forces to create the legendary "HOI-Titan". This font made its appearance in numerous exhibitions here at the customs port and at "Pengelengeleng" hosted at Pengland, a local association dedicated to art and design.
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