Derrida Display
Typeface: Derrida
Category: Display, All-Caps
Language: Latin
Year: 2021
Designer: Gerard Sierra
Client: A Space About
Derrida is a display typeface designed by Gerard Sierra in 2021 for A Space About, a space design studio from Barcelona. Made to be part of the studio’s graphic identity, the project was comissioned by Albert Villegas and Oriol Cabarrocas.
Sierra named the font after Jacques Derrida, an Algerian-born French philosopher, best known for developing the concept of deconstruction in the context of phenomenology. He was also one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy.
The type and the name itself is like a game mirrored with Albertus, a serif display font created by Berthold Wolpe. This font was the staring point from wich Villegas and Cabarrocas wanted to work and therefore Derrida in the same way as Wolpe’s font, is also named after a philosopher.
Influenced by postmodern architecture and the conceptual phenomenology of A Space About's projects, Derrida is build, almost sculpted, under the concepts of Construction, Diversity, Disruption and Mutability. Altogether, they create an alphabet that caputures the passage of time, as a lived space, whereas at the same time, it is contemporary and functional.
Each glyph is a battle between stone craving and sans-serif shapes. At the same time, the proportions of the whole alphabet are more contemporary than the ones used in Albertus, provioding a more uniform impression in the construction of words and phrases, in addition to the desired rarities of each letter.
Derrida is not for sale.
