Mailart Typeface
Mailart Typeface
Mail art is letters, objects and documentation of art projects produced, sent through the postal service and archived by mail artists. British designer Keith Bates created a typeface based on this self-creative patchwork process consisting of letters, numbers, characters and symbols. The foundation was a collection of design templates sent to him by some 130 mail artists after he called for submissions.
The typeface draws attention primarily for its fragmentary composition, which lends each piece of type the character of an individual work of art. The capital I, for instance, contains the words “I don’t understand”, the lowercase e is surrounded by stylised sunrays and the counter of the lowercase a – fittingly considering the origins – bears an envelope.