Ethan Earle Research

Architectural inspiration for typeface

Works for BUILD, an award-winning creative agency with an international reputation for creating strong visual narratives. Utilising graphic design, art direction, image making, moving image, and typography, we help you to communicate, tell your story or grow your brand with contemporary, thoughtful design.

Website Bio: I have a broad portfolio of work with a strong focus on brand & identity, type design, animation and print. 

Welbeck Grotesk is a typeface inspired by the architectural excellence of Welbeck Street car park situated in London – this following the devastating news of its immanent demolition.

Project developing typeface inspired by architecture, links to interview, 'I really love architecture, it’s a huge influence on my work, Le Corbusier especially. Architecture, like graphic design is about working with tight restrictions and rules. ' To use the restrictions of a building on the typeface is an interesting way to develop the practice of typography. Both have large amounts of rules and restrictions during the development.
The typeface developed has a rather different feel to the welbeck street car park, the car park is more geometric, triangular shape, an nontraditional building,and the typeface, Welbeck Grotesk, looks like a traditional typeface. Small differences such as the structure of joint on the R, it stems from the main stroke as apposed to the shoulder.

Dissertation Pt. 2. Thomas More's utopian alphabet set in concrete, spelling 'Brutalism'. Representing the ideologies shared by Modernist Architecture & Graphic Design.

Again here is another typeface, representing 'the ideologies shared by Modernist Architecture and Graphic Design', drawing more parallels between disciplines, again including Architecture. The typeface is physically manifested in concrete, a sturdy architectural medium, interesting choice of material to represent the Modernist Architectural element. Again links to interview, 'I work a lot on the computer as I design typefaces...consider a digital type as part of a project which can be developed into physical versions, rather than just a digital file existing in the cloud.'.