London-based Johnson Banks is an identity and branding company that delves into print and even 3D work on occasion. Their latest 3D experiment resulted in Arkitypo, a 3D alphabet that tells the history of typography. "Each letterform is different, each in turn interprets its own alphabet." For example, "A" is for Aksidenz Grotesk, a forerunner of Helvetica. It was "part of a family of early sans-serifs called 'grotesques'...for this design a condensed weight is 'fractalized,' turning a grotesque into a thing of beauty."
Each letter is methodically researched and many of the resulting forms are quite beautiful. Take the "B," an uppercase Bodoni B spiraling out of the form of a Baskerville B like a snail shell. "Baskerville and Bodoni are usually judged as two separate typefaces, but Giambattista Bodoni modeled his famous font on John Baskerville's...The key difference is that the thicks and thins are in turn thicker, and thinner."
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