How does History sound?

Interesting
history layers 225

In Typographic Chinese Whispers*, a project of Typeradio and the Saarbrücken School of Fine Arts (Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saarbrücken) under the direction of Indra Kupferschmid, students choose existing typefaces and interpret them in short compositions. Student Martin Kalle chose our History typeface system as the inspiration for the following piece:


Just as History features freely combinable elements with different visual styles, Kalle’s composition works by layering independent yet coordinated motifs in ever-changing combinations of colour and character. The result is a remarkable musical interpretation of a typographic subject.

Layering of History typeface

In the second phase of the project, Type & Media students of the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten) analysed the audio pieces and created typeface proposals based on them. Malte Herok, working from Kalle’s music, created a design concept that, as expected, bears little resemblance to the original typeface. But that is a different story which we might cover some other time.

*
Chinese Whispers is a children’s game also known as Telephone (in the US) or Stille Post (in Germany).