Tag Archives: lettering

Scientific A, B, Cs

Thanks to John Brownlee and his May 15, 2014 article on Fast Company about a fascinating project which marries typography/letteringĀ  (the artist refers to her work as ‘lettering’) with scientific inventions (Note: A link has been removed),

If you’ve ever wondered how a Faraday circuit, a steam engine, or a cyclotron works, this is the typeface for you.

A glossary of the 26 inventions that have most changed the world have been turned into a literal ABCs, thanks to a new typeface by New Delhi design student Khyati Trehan.

Trehan has placed some of the material for her project, The Beauty of Scientific Diagrams on Behance (an online portfolio),

The project aims to explore scientific diagrams and take form integration to more complex territories. It looks at experimenting with typography, lettering and illustration, paying tribute to the history of science.

Since making the perfect match between the letter and the diagram was such a task, choosing the invention or the discovery was hardly up to me but dependent on what I could find (double coincidence of wants). I couldn’t find appropriate diagrams that looked like the letters they needed to be morphed into for P, X and Q.

Also, blogsfeaturing this project have been calling this a typeface for some reason but in no way is it a typeface. [emphasis mine] It’s lettering. Making a typeface is a completely different ball game and in my opinion, is much much harder.

Purchase prints atĀ http://society6.com/KhyatiTrehan

Here’s one image from the sampling she offers in her online portfolio,

Downloaded from http://www.behance.net/gallery/The-Beauty-of-Scientific-Diagrams/11833563

Downloaded from http://www.behance.net/gallery/The-Beauty-of-Scientific-Diagrams/11833563

Trehan has also documented The Beauty of Scientific Diagrams project on the ISSUU digital publishing platform where you will find an 84 pp. report in English and links to supporting documentation in English and French.

The Beauty of Scientific Diagrams

A documentation of my 2nd elective done as a student of Graphic Design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

The very curious can find more about India’s National Institute of Design here. From the institute’s Right to Information webpage,

The National Institute of Design (NID) is one of the foremost multi-disciplinary institutions in the field of design education, applied research, training, design consultancy services and outreach programmes. NID is a Society registered under the Societies Registration Act,1860 (21 of 1860) and also registered under the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950 (29 of 1950) and established in 1961 as an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Industry (now known as the Ministry of Commerce and Industry).

I was quite interested to see that the institute hosted an Indo-French Design Conclave in October 2013,

Indo French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (CEFIPRA) is an autonomous body for bilateral scientific cooperation between India and France, promoting collaborative research in cutting edge science and technology fields.

CEFIPRA in partnership with NID (National institute of Design), Ahmedabad are holding a Design Conclave cutting across disciplines in the design and engineering, on 21st and 22nd October 2013in New Delhi.

This would be a preceding event for the international Technology Summit, New Delhi during 23-24th October 2013 with France as the partner country.

The goal of this conclave is to explore the possibility of Indo-French collaborations in the interface of engineering and design through:

a) Scientific research
b) Design and Technology collaborative Research
c) Student and Faculty mobility
c) Industrial (especially SMEs [small to medium enterprises]) …

This may help to explain the French reference materials informing Trehan’s project.