Born from the imaginative mind of visual artist Ceci Erlich, F37 Confusa breaks and melts our alphabet into a tantalising, almost indecipherable patchwork of shapes.
F37 Confusa is a single-weight font with kerning so tight, the letters appear to fuse together. Using a clever and extensive set of alternate characters, the font seamlessly merges as you type. While at first glance, the words might seem indistinguishable, there is a method in the madness. We worked closely with Ceci to strike a careful balance between her reality-blurring vision and the need for readability in practical use.
Cecilia Erlich
• F37 Confusa
• Styles 1
• 2024
The Designer
Cecilia Erlich is a Madrid-based motion designer and visual artist with a background in fine arts and over 20 years of professional experience.
Her work, both personal and commercial, focuses on visual experimentation, exploring new techniques and visual languages through a conceptual approach and an artistic gaze
Inspiration
F37 Confusa
Interview
Tell us about the inspiration behind your collaboration with F37®×. If it was an unused concept, what was the potential use case for it.
The collaboration was sparked by a proposal from F37®. I’m not a trained typographer, nor have I created a typeface before or have the technical background for it. However, in my graphic work, I love to manipulate and transform typefaces using effects that I develop. From these experiments, new ideas and creative possibilities emerge. As a graphic designer and visual artist, I primarily work through motion. By applying various effects to type in motion, I explore interventions and transformations that reveal new ways of perceiving type. Confusa is the outcome of some of these explorations. F37® saw the potential in these ideas, and from there, our collaboration was born.
When starting the process of creating your font, what typographic conventions did you look to break or experiment with? Or were there conventions of functionality you championed?
As I mentioned before, I’m not focused on creating typefaces per se, but rather intervening with forms and the concept of legibility. Many of my works explore the boundaries between what is legible and illegible. I’m interested in questioning how far we can distort and modify a letter before it becomes unrecognizable. For example, how much can you distort the shape of an "A" before it no longer looks like an "A"? These types of questions lead me to explore the spaces between what we recognize as a letter and what becomes an abstract shape. With Confusa, we’ve challenged the conventional forms of letters and experimented with the limits of legibility. Another aspect I’m interested in is how letters relate to each other or what happens when we read text in motion.
Now that your typeface has launched, what would be your dream project to use your F37® typeface on?
Since this is my first time working on a typeface, I’m intrigued to see how other designers and colleagues in the profession will use it. I’m particularly interested in seeing how they incorporate it into their projects, as it’s a bold typeface and definitely a challenge to work with.
What have you learnt through developing and creating your own typeface(s) with our F37® type designers?
I’ve learned, once again, that I have a lot to learn. It’s been an inspiring process seeing how F37® shaped the idea, and along the way, I’ve discovered new possibilities in type design.
How would you describe your typeface in three words?
Read in context.
F37 Confusa Font Sampler
