Case Study: Yamantaka Typeface

Sometimes when I am starting a design job, I can “see” certain aspects of the design clearly. In 2015 I was approached to work on a documentary about how different cultures see death. I imagined seeing the word DEATH in a very square typeface, taking up the full screen, leaving no room for anything else.

My first drawing of the font was highly irregular, and metrics and measuring were not used. Everything was based on optical weight and feeling. It was a beautiful mess. I feel like in the day of perfect fonts, irregular and unique fonts are more memorable and interesting to me. I cleaned this up from that state but the eccentric aspects still remain.

I ended up calling this version of the typeface Yamantaka after the deity that ‘defeats death’ and gave it the ability to engulf space as needed.

More here »>https://www.publictype.us/fonts/yamantaka

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Links: Cina Associates, Cina Process, Cina Art, Public Type

Extra: The video for Lil Yachty “Say Something” is pretty phenomenal, been watching it a lot this week.