Typeface Design – Nephilim

Barry Deck’s Cyberotica became one of the ubiquitous typefaces of the 1990’s. (Some might say one of the overused typefaces of the 1990’s. Neville Brody’s and Emigre’s typefaces also come to mind.) That’s not to say it isn’t good. Personally I think it’s a terrific typeface. But that still didn’t mean that I was going to use it. What I did do with it however was use it as a starting point to create a whole new typeface. The genesis was, as it usually is, a logotype. A few characters are created. Sometimes it never goes beyond those few characters, and other times the possibility exists to extend it into a whole alphabet. That was the case here.

What I used was the left portion of the W, and transformed that into a full typeface.

Fun display face, that works well for some letter combinations and not for others. I try to use it judiciously. Better for a logo or a headline, not for whole passages of text.

It exists in three weights.

Done around early 96.