Graphic studio Non-Format has created a from-scratch typeface for musician Amy Kohn's new album, PlexiLusso. Photo: Non-Format
Graphic studio Non-Format has created a from-scratch typeface for musician Amy Kohn's new album, PlexiLusso.
Photo: Non-Format
Non-Format practically had free range. Kohn only gave them a few photographs as starter material for the album cover design. Photo: Non-Format
Non-Format practically had free range. Kohn only gave them a few photographs as starter material for the album cover design.
Photo: Non-Format
"We weren’t convinced [the photos] were strong enough to stand alone as the album cover art,” says Forss, the Twin Cities-based half of Non-Format. “Apart from that all we had was the album title and the track listing and all the credits and the lyrics." Photo: Non-Format
"We weren’t convinced [the photos] were strong enough to stand alone as the album cover art,” says Forss, the Twin Cities-based half of Non-Format. “Apart from that all we had was the album title and the track listing and all the credits and the lyrics."
Photo: Non-Format
Forss decided to create a new typeface to match the effervescent, sometimes orchestral sound of Kohn's music. Photo: Non-Format
Forss decided to create a new typeface to match the effervescent, sometimes orchestral sound of Kohn's music.
Photo: Non-Format
It’s a hieroglyphic, disjointed font that breaks some of the most basic rules of type-making, like using a fixed height for the ascenders on lowercase letters. Photo: Non-Format
It’s a hieroglyphic, disjointed font that breaks some of the most basic rules of type-making, like using a fixed height for the ascenders on lowercase letters.
Photo: Non-Format
It's marginally legible—by design. “If the brain has to work a little it’s more likely to stick with you,” Forss says. Photo: Non-Format
It's marginally legible—by design. “If the brain has to work a little it’s more likely to stick with you,” Forss says.
Photo: Non-Format
One of the biggest perks of creating album covers (sadly, a dwindling subgenre of graphic design work) is how few restrictions there are for designers. “It’s a fantastic platform for expression,” says Jon Forss of graphic studio Non-Format. When you work with other artists, “there’s an expectation to push things, and you can’t just rely on everything being legible.” In this case, that meant a font that was deliberately hard to read.
When Amy Kohn, a musician whose effervescent sound was once described by Pitchfork as “fit for people who think Steve Reich should be writing showtunes,” approached Non-Format to design the cover for her new album, PlexiLusso, she didn’t send any more starter material than just a few pictures. “A photographer had taken some photographs of her and we weren’t convinced they were strong enough to stand alone as the album cover art,” says Forss, the Twin Cities-based half of Non-Format. “Apart from that all we had was the album title and the track listing and all the credits and the lyrics so it was really a case of trying to find a way of expressing the spirit of the album” with just those elements.
The cover and inside jacket of Amy Kohn’s new album. Non-Format
Forss decided to create a new typography from scratch. The disjointed font that breaks some of the most basic rules of type-making: For one, there’s no fixed height for the lowercase letter ascenders (the taller strokes on letters like ‘h,’ ‘k,’ or ‘l’). And because all letters are fixed on a central axis, the topography of each word is a bit random. The result is a geometric, handwritten effect. To create room for the new type, Forss adopted a layout trick from Duran Duran’s cover for Rio , which features a shrunken piece of art, and therefore extra space for lettering.
Still, even with a little extra legroom, Forss’s new typeface is marginally legible, and that’s entirely by design. “If the brain has to work a little it’s more likely to stick with you,” he says. “If you use Helvetica the brain doesn’t even notice, doesn’t even register or read it. The part of your consciousness that wants to be entertained is hardly even tickled.”
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