ABC Camera Species
typographic fiction
A perfect typographic analogy to Mendel’s peas, ABC Camera served as an inspiration for typographic fiction as a method for shifting perceptual judgment of a typeface beyond its aesthetics and historic references.
Created by a Berlin-based type design studio Dinamo, ABC Camera is a “reinterpretation of light traps, which were originally used in the 60s and 70s to make text more readable on TV screens”, but its playful pairing of the two variants (Camera and Camera Plain) is a perfect illustration of the concept of a phenotype, used in biology and genetics.
This spontaneous association sparked an almost scientific curiosity about how such concepts as phenotype, dominant gene, or genetic chimera could be illustrated through a combination of fonts. If every letter of the alphabet represents a gene type, and typeface variety represents genetic expression, then the conceptual operation of combining “genes” can lead to a fantastic creature – a visual representation of a natural combinatory process and the variety of its outcomes.
Abstracted from purely aesthetic judgement, the typeface suggested a different perceptual analyses and implementation logic, with a rich variety of results.
Ref:
ABC Camera
Mendelian inheritance