Typography is the art and craft of blending words and images. From the ancient Chinese practice of calligraphy to the invention of Helvetica in 1957, Typography has been a major part of graphic design. Now, with the development of 3D printing, designers have tools which enable them to upgrade their work by creating modern variations on traditional practices of type design. These works combine writing, sculpture & design – all using 3D printing. Here are 5 examples.

1. A23D



During the last 500 years people needed a letterpress to print letters. Now New North Studio (a letter pressing studio) and A2/SW/HK studio (headed by Scott Williams & Henrik Kubel) collaborated to create a 21st century version of letterpress printing. To feed new energy into the good old letterpress, they used 3D printing in a typography-minded way. What they did is design a new font, designed especially for 3D printing and then letter pressing. The font was then 3D printed, and the blocks created by the process were, and are still, used by the craftsmen. In this experiment it’s the old mixing with the new. One example of the A in the font is below.

2. Textscape

Chinese designer Hongtau Zhou tapped into history by channeling the invention of printed letters (in China) and building from it, literally. He created Textscape – an intricate system for designing structures and cities, of sorts, from 3D printed letters (see below).

Textscape makes 3D documents which combine the letters and the visual design, which helps enliven the text. These letter-based objects transform reading into a conceptual experience, a combination of text and sculpture. When was the last time you built something with letters?

3. Kashida 3D font

For this design project actual fonts were created, for Latin characters and Arabic ones. It’s called Kashida 3D Font. It was designed by Yara Khoury and Melle Hammer, in collaboration with Dutch studio Freedom of Creation (headed by Janne Kyttanen). This project is a collaboration with the Khatt Foundation, dedicated to advancing Arabic typography and design research. Letters are selected by every client and 3D printed by request. The letter-sculptures make an addition to the field of 3D printed typography by injecting language with a new font – designed especially to be 3D printed.

The sculptures don’t appear as they should, from left to right (as in Latin characters) or right to left (as they do with Arabic), but are spaced seemingly randomly. This leaves observers to figure out for themselves how to read the words. The font-sculptures can be interpreted by the meaning of words, and the shape of the 3D printed material itself (see below and up top).

4. 3D Printed Book Cover

Physical books may seem to be dying breed, but with the help of astute designers and new technology, they can become a playground for design. Riverhead Publishing (headed by designer Helen Yentus) designed this 3D printed book cover for American author Chang-rae Lee’s novel On Such a Full Sea. The cover takes the title out of print and into the reader’s space, stretched across the base of the book from the yellow part, where the sentences start. Yentus was skeptic at first over the possibility of the project, as she stated: “You get used to the six-by-nine rectangle where everything is flat.” In addition to that, the author said, in a release, that the cover “reintroduces the idea of a book as an art object”. With the changes in the book industry, using 3D printed typography can help print develop a physical form of its own, thus expanding its reach- commercially and literally.

5. Arkitypo

Setting out to design ‘the alphabets of alphabets’, British design studio Johnson Banks took inspiration from previous interpretations of the alphabet to create a unique set of designs. This collection, called Arkitypo, 3D printed the series of the English alphabet, with each letter coming from a whole different font-series. One comes from standard German typeface from the 3os. The other is a British font designed for London Transport in 1916. Another font’s ‘G’ is a pair of spectacles. These sometimes-letter shaped figures highlight design and the unlimited boundaries of inspiration. So many fonts have been created before, and reusing some of them in a new 3D printed environment is a way of curating and presenting typography in a new light.

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