Panoptikon

designed by Nurullah Gokdogan

One person can make waves.

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Panoptikon is a sans serif display typeface that comes in 3 styles: bold, regular and italic. The typeface is high-contrast and fun to use for museum exhibitions. If you want a playful and authoritative display face, Panoptikon will satisfy your needs for the exhibition. Concave stems give it a dynamic form. Geometric sans serif fonts are everywhere and art needs some fun and playful headlines and descriptions.

Since I come from an art background, I can empathize with how art is one of the bold ways to express feelings. I know how hard it is to create art, which needs a grounded messenger for your message. Panoptikon is delightful and bold enough to carry your message’s echoes.

Bold should be bold. I designed a bold weight, audacious enough. The regular weight is a great choice for the artworks’ descriptions. This typeface takes a stand for artists.

Story of the Name

The word panopticon derives from the Greek word for “all seeing” – panoptes. Panopticon is a prison concept created by Jeremy Bentham. The plan of the prison is a circular building that has a tower in the middle where a single security guard is always observing the prison. Prisoners are not able to tell when they are being watched or from where.

This made me wonder, “Why don’t we apply this concept to museums metaphorically or even in real life?” Metaphorically, art is around type. Type is like a proper representative for the artwork. It helps us to observe them and learn about them. In real life, we could build a museum in a circular building, where all the artworks can be observed at once from a tower and improve our consciousness of being surrounded by art at any moment outside of the museum as well.

Acknowledgements

Type West was my dream. I loved every second of being here. I love letterforms and it feels so good to be with people who feel the same thing as you. I have learned a lot from everyone. My life is changed so much this year by the type education. I feel so lucky to have the chance of taking it in-class for one and half semesters.

I want to thank you, my instructors, my classmates, and everyone who was involved. I remember when I got a rejection from Type@Cooper 3 years ago. They told me they don’t accept students who could fail. I didn’t think that was a good reason but I understand now, it was a long run. You can consider this as a love letter. I am writing my first love letter for Letterform Archive.

Designed by Nurullah Gokdogan