Utopian Typography

Utopia, pictured above, is a “digital typeface that portrays the mixture between the modernist architecture of Oscar Niemeyer and informal occupation of the urban space that shapes major Brazilian cities.” In other words, all the letters look like buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer, jumbled up in Brazilian proximities.

[Images: BLDGBLOG written in Utopia; the whole font, posterized].

Utopia was designed by Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain; because their site uses Flash, however, you can’t directly link to the font. But it’s there.
So if somebody stumbles on a city full of Oscar Niemeyer buildings… will they suspect hidden messages in every glance?

10 thoughts on “Utopian Typography”

  1. This is a really cool font. To Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, keep up the great work. Suggestion: I would like to see a font based on the designs of the Eames office.

  2. I’m sure these characters were used in the UTOPIA issue of BIG Magazine number 39 at least 5 years back. It is one of the best single issues of a magazine I have ever seen and these utopian charaters set randomly across the pages were part of that. There is also some great portraits of Niemeyer himself, the cover is a shot of his hand holding a marker having just written ‘Big’ on the page.

  3. Thank you so much for this post. It’s an intriguing project that will definitely fail in its attempt, but nevertheless proves its value through platforms like this one.
    Did Geoff Manaugh and the artists ever consider this project in the context of the work and writings of people like Otto Neurath (known for ISOTYPE) and/or Paul Otlet?
    Our organisation, Stroom Den Haag (Netherlands) is currently running a program called ‘After Neurath’. Please refer to the webdossier ‘After Neurath’ on our website http://www.stroom.nl.

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