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For this year’s Rundgang at the Offenbach University of Art and Design, Helene Hohmann and Lea Johanna Becker designed an exhibition featuring two feminist typedesign projects. reify and nomo are the results of an in-depth engagement with feminist theory, applying theoretical concepts to the form of characters and typefaces. Although they were developed independently, both address similar questions, making it fitting to present them together.
A glitch refers to an unavoidable, unpredictable disruption in digital systems. Glitch feminism takes the idea of the glitch and acknowledges that in a social system dominated by exclusionary power structures and marginalization, a glitch might not be a mistake but a systematic error. reify is a variable typeface that glitches, that can avoid the responsibility of being useful, that can disrupt, that can be an error, but doesn’t have to be.
nomo is a monospace font with variable advance width. The narrowest style is 300, the widest 900 units wide, the whole spectrum possible. This translates to the font being of the same weight within a style (mono), but in total different along this width (nomo).
This characteristic makes it possible to pursue topics not only in terms of content, but also in their form, to examine different questions. In the design of the font, but also through designing with the font.
Both typefaces will be on display from July 20 to November 24, 2024 as part of the exhibition Same Bold Stories? Type Design by Women and Queers in the 20th and 21st Centuries at the Klingspor Museum in Offenbach.
reify × nomo–When Typedesign Meets Feminist Theory
Typeface: reify
Designer: Helene Hohmann
Release: June, 2024
Typeface: nomo
Designer: Lea Johanna Becker
Release: December, 2023
