For the third year, Studio Ostendo has earned a spot in The Society of Typographic Arts Top 100 Examples of Graphic Design with Caeli typeface design.
Part of Kaleb's creative practice is running and managing Akimbo Type Foundry. Akimbo works towards a difference mission than Studio Ostendo, though the skills and practice elevate Studio Ostendo all the same. As defined in social media bios and descriptions, Kaleb defines Akimbo like this: "If fonts are oxygen for #designers, I make poison gas. #Typedesign as performance #Streamed on @twitch. #Speculative #variablefonts with broken axes. Critically engaging culture."
From the STA submission:
Caeli is a speculative variable font designed to at once push the boundaries of the variable font format and critically engage climate change through type design. Caeli was developed in five steps:
① Digital Rendering
② Mold-making
③ Ice Casting
④ Environment Action
⑤ Re-digitization
Yes, Caeli was cast in ice and allowed to melt, giving the font its heavy axis. This process led to a variable font, ranging from Light to Black weights, guided by melting ice from the perspective of expanding water.
Caeli characters were drawn with crisp geometric edges at the regular weight to emphasize the transition into a melted letterform. As the Weight axis of Caeli increases, the letterforms that were once ice melt and expand to a more ‘bold’ form.
AKIMBO is a method for critically engaging type design. There are a plethora of type foundries better equipped to make beautiful sans-serif typefaces, lovely script and hand lettered fonts, and stunning text fonts. This foundry is engaged in making type as an instructive practice, to lift the veil of the designer’s work, and to critically grapple with contemporary type practices.
Too often both graphic and type designers create without answering why they are doing it, or, more importantly, what it means as it enters the world. All visual work enters and shapes a public culture—AKIMBO seeks to enter into culture with intentionality. Intentionality doesn’t need to equate to a capital usefulness as most type foundries, rather, intentionality might mean to push a technical form, to expand typographic environments, or converse where others might find it uncomfortable.
Thanks to the STA for this honor and opportunity to continually gauge our creative practice.
