Friday, January 20, 2017

KARLOFF | Convergence of Beauty and Ugliness


Karloff explores the idea of irreconcilable differences, how two extremes could be combined into a coherent whole.
Looking at the high-contrast Didone which are considered by many as some of the most beautiful typefaces in existence, and the eccentric ‘Italian’, from the middle of the Industrial Revolution, a reversed-contrast typeface which was designed to deliberately attract readers’ attention by defying their expectations. Strokes that were thick in classical models were thin, and vice versa — a dirty trick to create freakish letterforms. No other style in the history of typography has provoked such negative reactions as the Italian.
Karloff, the result of this project, connects the high contrast Modern type of Bodoni and Didot with the monstrous Italians. The difference between the attractive and repulsive forms lies in a single design parameter, the contrast between the thick and the thin.

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