“Invisible Cities Font Design” is a creative exploration of typography and narrative. It’s an innovative approach that shows how font design can transcend conventional boundaries and become a medium for storytelling. It captures the fantastical and poetic nature of Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” In a way that merges literature and design. Through this project, readers can experience the cities not only through words but also through visually expressive typography.
In the book Invisible Cities, Marco Polo describes the 55 fictional cities he visited on his expeditions for Emperor Kublai Khan, who was anxious about maintaining control over his vast empire. Although Kublai Khan doesn’t necessarily believe everything Marco Polo describes, he listens with more attention and curiosity than any other messenger. These fantastical cities range from a microscopic sprawling city to a cobweb-like city suspended in the air and a two-dimensional city like Moriana.
I transformed these imaginative city descriptions into a unique font system. Based on the Helvetica font, each font is meticulously customized to reflect the essence of a particular city. The result is a book showcasing 55 different fonts, each designed to visually encapsulate the atmosphere and structure of Calvino’s poetic cities.
