Echelon is based upon 1970s Eastern European ‘pipe-style’ typefaces. This style of Communist consumer typography came from what, at the time, seemed like a bizarre mirror universe: Existing alongside the West, similar-but-different, essentially unknowable. Even though the letterforms had the same historical origins as their Western equivalents, they also had their own bizarre fashionable/unfashionable aesthetic. The parallels between the surveillance practices of the Soviet Union and those of today’s Western governments informed the naming of this typeface. Echelon is the codename for a massive international surveillance system that collects and processes data from communications satellites. It can eavesdrop on telecoms and computer systems, it can track bank accounts. It can record and store information on millions of individuals.

Lifeform is a modern display font created as a result of my experiments on the forms of letters. While working on the font, I had ambivalent feelings, on the one hand I liked the individual curved lines, on the other hand they seemed very strange, alien and illogical. It was like looking into a microscope and seeing something strange. I wanted to develop and study these forms as something new, because I had never seen anything similar before. The result is a contrasting font that has both curves and sharp, and smooth lines that resemble some kind of organic matter. The font is well suited for large headlines, posters and covers. Its strange design catches the eye and will not leave the viewer indifferent.