HYKOM
HYKOM is a concept font that I designed for the stage design of a staging of the play “Hysterikon” by Ingrid Lausund that happened on the 30th June 2022 at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg.
The font is used in various designs such as posters, flyers and signs. The font is not a fixed font. Or it is. But you can make your own. With the same set of actions I followed to come up with this font. Basically HYKOM is not a font. But a set of actions (or algorithm) to come up with a unique font. The font comes with upper- and lowercase letters, numbers 0-9 and characters for “.” and “,”. Letters come in two weights, where bold has a higher number of black pixels.
My main goal was to create a font that looked like some form of code or cryptic message and that had no rules, no way to decrypt it except for knowing which character is which. I tried to embody the hidden, meaningless, ever changing rules and systems of capitalism and consumerism that are also part of the stage design in this font.
With the design of the logo and posters I tried to imagine how a retail brand that operated worldwide could look like.
The stagedesign I came up with was inspired by the floors of gyms of public schools - which display the rules of various games at the same time. I also gave each actor a certain set of rules by which they had to move (everybody only knew the rules I gave to them, not the rules the others acten upon). And each member of the audience was given a wristband with one of the three main colors which kept them in a constant fear of participation (there was none).
