PROJECT
ARECIBO NEUE
CATEGORY
TYPEFACE DESIGN
PROJECT DETAILS
‘Arecibo Neue’ is a typeface that reimagines the famous ‘Arecibo message’ — humanity’s first attempt at contacting extraterrestrial life.
For this project, my mission was to attempt to answer hypothetical questions like ‘What if aliens were real? How could we message them? And what typeface would we use?’. The result is the creation of this experimental display typeface. It was designed so that each letter within the alphabet pushes the limits of legibility to the point of being borderline incomprehensible, evoking a sense of alien language.
One main inspiration that helped inform my typeface was the pixelated look of the Arecibo Message; it uses a 73x23 grid to form the encoded message. This format stems from using computers as a medium since all graphics from computers are made up of pixels.
‘Arecibo Neue’ is made up of squares and rectangles of uniform thickness. Each letter is composed using a grid system; consonants follow a strict 7x10 grid while vowels follow a 5x10 grid. I felt that imitating the pixel-based format was crucial in conveying the sci-fi context of the typeface.
To further evoke the feeling of an alien language, I decided to incorporate the theme of ‘strangely familiar but different’ by designing each character to represent their respective letters subtly. Through testing various forms and playing around with positive and negative space, the characters hint at their respective letter but look ‘alien’ enough as to not give away the letter entirely. This ensures that time and care are taken when attempting to understand this typeface.
Hello!
HI
