What is the 112 Hours font?
Rian Hughes’ 15th collection of fonts, “112 Hours”, is entirely dedicated to numbers.
Culled from a myriad of sources – clock faces, tickets, watches house numbers – it is an eclectic and wide-ranging set.
Each font contains only numerals and related punctuation – no letters. More…
A new book has been designed by Hughes to show the collection, and includes sample settings, complete character sets, source material and an introduction. This is available print-to-order on Blurb in paperback and hardback:
http://www.blurb.com/b/5539073-112-hours-hardback
http://www.blurb.com/b/5539045-112-hours-paperback
From the introduction:
The idea for this, the fifteenth Device Fonts collection, began when I came across an online auction site dedicated to antique clocks. I was mesmerized by the inventive and bizarre numerals on their faces. Shorn of the need to extend the internal logic of a typeface through the entire alphabet, the designers of these treasures were free to explore interesting forms and shapes that would otherwise be denied them.
Given this horological starting point, I decided to produce 12 fonts, each featuring just the numbers from 1 to 12 and, where appropriate, a small set of supporting characters — in most cases, the international currency symbols, a colon, full stop, hyphen, slash and the number sign. 10, 11 and 12 I opted to place in the capital A, B and C slots. Each font is shown in its entirety here.
I soon passed 12, so the next logical finish line was 24. Like a typographic Jack Bauer, I soon passed that too -— the more I researched, the more I came across interesting and unique examples that insisted on digitization, or that inspired me to explore some new design direction.
The sources broadened to include tickets, numbering machines, ecclesiastical brass plates and more. Though not derived from clock faces, I opted to keep the 1-12 conceit for consistency, which allowed me to design what are effectively numerical ligatures.
I finally concluded one hundred fonts over my original estimate at 112. Even though it’s not strictly divisible by 12, the number has a certain symmetry, I reasoned, and was as good a place as any to round off the project.
An overview reveals a broad range that nonetheless fall into several loose categories. There are fairly faithful revivals, only diverging from their source material to even out inconsistencies and regularize weighting or shape to make them more functional in a modern context; designs taken directly from the source material, preserving all the inky grit and character of the original; designs that are loosely based on a couple of numbers from the source material but diverge dramatically for reasons of improved aesthetics or mere whim; and entirely new designs with no historical precedent.
As projects like this evolve (and, to be frank, get out of hand), they can take you in directions and to places you didn’t envisage when you first set out. Along the way, I corresponded with experts in railway livery, and now know about the history of cab side and smokebox plates; I travelled to the Musée de l’imprimerie in Nantes, France, to examine their numbering machines; I photographed house numbers in Paris, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam and here in the UK; I delved into my collection of tickets, passes and printed ephemera; I visited the Science Museum in London, the Royal Signals Museum in Dorset, and the Museum of London to source early adding machines, war-time telegraphs and post-war ration books.
I photographed watches at Worthing Museum, weighing scales large enough to stand on in a Brick Lane pub, and digital station clocks at Baker Street tube station.
I went to the London Under-ground archive at Acton Depot, where you can see all manner of vintage enamel signs and woodblock type; I photographed grocer’s stalls in East End street markets; I dug out old clocks I recalled from childhood at my parents’ place, examined old manual typewriters and cash tills, and crouched down with a torch to look at my electricity meter.
I found out that Jane Fonda kicked a policeman, and unusually for someone with a lifelong aversion to sport, picked up some horse-racing jargon.
I share some of that research here. In many cases I have not been slavish about staying close to the source material if I didn’t think it warranted it, so a close comparison will reveal differences. These changes could be made for aesthetic reasons, functional reasons (the originals didn’t need to be set in any combination, for example), or just reasons of personal taste. Where reference for the additional characters were not available — which was always the case with fonts derived from clock faces — I have endeavored to design them in a sympathetic style.
I may even extend some of these to the full alphabet in the future. If I do, these number-only fonts could be considered as experimental design exercises: forays into form to probe interesting new graphic possibilities.
112 Hours Font families
The 112 Hours includes the following font families:
- Hours Annex
- Hours Aphrodite
- Hours Appartement
- Hours Atto
- Hours Atto Zag
- Hours Battleship
- Hours Belmont
- Hours Betws-y-Coed
- Hours Blastdoor
- Hours Blastdoor Solid
- Hours Bond
- Hours Boudoir
- Hours Brampton
- Hours Buzz
- Hours Cabside
- Hours Cameron
- Hours Carriage
- Hours Cashtill
- Hours Chiffrage
- Hours Chrono
- Hours Click
- Hours Coupon
- Hours Crate
- Hours Darvell
- Hours Debit
- Hours Diadem
- Hours Dieppe
- Hours Discount
- Hours Distaff
- Hours District
- Hours Domino Black
- Hours Domino White
- Hours Dunromin
- Hours Dunromin Solid
- Hours Elgin
- Hours Emboss
- Hours Enamel
- Hours Excursion
- Hours Exit Ramp
- Hours Flow
- Hours Fluoro
- Hours Forever
- Hours Fortnight
- Hours Fortnight Solid
- Hours Georgia
- Hours Grocer
- Hours Hal
- Hours Hal Shadow
- Hours Hands
- Hours Inches
- Hours Inkjet
- Hours Input
- Hours Ironclad
- Hours Jackpot
- Hours Keystroke
- Hours Kowloon
- Hours Lampard
- Hours Laney
- Hours Liberty
- Hours Lotto
- Hours Luggagetag
- Hours Maison
- Hours Maison Solid
- Hours Matrix Overinked
- Hours Matrix Underinked
- Hours Mercy
- Hours Metropolitan
- Hours Missile
- Hours Moderne
- Hours Mugshot
- Hours Nantes
- Hours Parker
- Hours Perpetual
- Hours Pixel
- Hours Plate
- Hours Player
- Hours Porthmadoc
- Hours Prestige
- Hours Punch
- Hours Quartz
- Hours Quinn
- Hours Recon
- Hours Regiment
- Hours Return
- Hours Roosevelt
- Hours Salisbury
- Hours Savoy
- Hours Serial
- Hours Shine
- Hours Smokebox
- Hours Steel
- Hours Steeplechase
- Hours Straight
- Hours Stub
- Hours Sturminster
- Hours Sudbury
- Hours Tally
- Hours Telegraph
- Hours Throughput
- Hours Thursday
- Hours Ticket
- Hours Timestamp
- Hours Tomorrow
- Hours Tote
- Hours Transom
- Hours Tricoire
- Hours Trunk
- Hours Twelve
- Hours Urgent
- Hours Vanity
- Hours Vantage
- Hours Vector
- Hours Veronika
- Hours Vesper
- Hours Visage
- Hours Voucher
- Hours Wharf
- Hours Willow
- Hours Woodville
- Hours Worthing
112 Hours Preview
Here is a preview of how 112 Hours will look. For more previews using your own text as an example, click here.
