The Habitat of a Typeface Today

Modern Balance by
Joel Luca Sequeira Ferreira

Modern Balance

Digital Platforms have become an extension of human capabilities and empower us in a lot of ways. But unlike the rapidly evolving technology, the human brain has not changed much in the last 1000 years. We as humans are not fully adapted to a digital world. As much as technology helps us evolve, excessive consumption of digital media brings disadvantages to the human experience resulting in physical changes of our brain. As an essential part and enabler of everyday life, technology should be used in a healthy and balanced way. With this project i want to bring awareness to this topic.

Modern Balance is a typeface drawing from elements of digital platforms, merged with organic shapes of the human brain. The natural shapes of visualisations of our neuronal network are combined with template elements of tech giant Apple.

Joel Luca Sequeira Ferreira

Since the first personal computer came into this world in the 1980s, there have already been three generations of the World Wide Web. Web standards have continuously evolved, and graphical user interfaces surround us everywhere on various devices. Most human computer interactions and the resulting interfaces are not designed with a cultural mission in mind, but defined by the five largest, most dominant, and most prestigious companies in the information technology industry. By studying visual and structural constraints that we are facing through predefined interaction surfaces, and the standards, norms, influences and styles that have been established, each student designed a typeface and its habitat on this website.

Participating students

Niklas Weisenbach ↘ HMT John Weber ↘ Anomalie Juhee Han ↘ White Forest Michele Sablone ↘ Hypersonic Emre Kızıldelioğlu ↘ Sync Moritz Schneider ↘ What Do You Recognize? Joel Luca Sequeira Ferreira ↘ Modern Balance Sophie Eckhardt ↘ Four Tones Saara Kuum ↘ Mildewy Tizian Repp ↘ Wetlands Felix Harr ↘ Reditus

This website was programmed by Simon Knebl.

The Habitat of a Typeface Today was a seminar at the Communication Department of Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in the summer semester of 2022 supervised by Katharina Köhler.