Faith Hardal - Contemporary Typeface Research

Faith Hardal is an Istanbul based graphic designer who focuses predominantly on typography. His experimental and decorative fonts are often less functional and legible and focus more on form and concept. Despite that they are incredibly intricate and pleasing to the eye, using visual research as key points of the typographical forms such as his gothic typeface FH Fraktur which is highly influenced by old architectural structures, a visual motif very prominent upon viewing the letterforms.

I really like the contemporary experimental nature of Hardal’s typography and its something I’d very much like to incorporate into my design for Abbey Sans. Abbey Sans needs to be readable, use curved visual letterforms reminiscent of 70’s psychedelic typography but also be relevant in a m modern day setting. I think a good way of doing this which Hardal does with his typography is using recurring shapes in each letterform and putting each letterform through the same visual system. While this didn’t work to well with my last idea for a typeface, where some letterforms didn’t work within the system and came out looking less resolved, perhaps its a case of treating groups of letterforms, with similar visual structures, differently.