Every year starting around March, designers collectively participate in a 36-day endeavor called the ’36 Days of Type’, where each day, designers express their creativity by redesigning letters and numbers from the alphabet (A-Z followed by 0-9). The challenge primarily sees participation from visual designers, illustrators, and 3D modelers, although this unusual entry from Yash Mathur beautifully transcends design disciplines by creating an automotive-design-inspired typeface! Mathur looks to car brands and models for his inspiration, and cleverly reinterprets their headlights, turning them into letters and numbers. If there’s one thing worth commending here, it’s undoubtedly Mathur’s ingenuity, but along with it, one can’t help but appreciate how far headlights and taillights have come since the advent of LEDs. Thanks to halogens, LEDs, and edge-lit plastics, you can now virtually make a headlight or a taillight in any shape you choose. The only constraint here is brightness – since a headlight/taillight also serves a purpose, it needs to be bright enough. Although these light designs are purely conceptual, I do wish companies would embrace their headlights as a form of their branding (just like this Mercedes concept did!)
Mathur’s project features virtually every brand you can think of, from the well-known Audi, Porsche, Tesla, Ford, and Lamborghini, to even a few lesser-known brands like Donkervoort, Oldsmobile, and W Motors. Mathur worked on this series during the first lockdown in 2020, and it only made sense to showcase it during this year’s 36 Days of Type! You can view the entire series chronologically by scrolling down. I’ll let Yash’s work do the talking.
P.S. Don’t forget to scroll down to the end to see the entire project in a collage!
Designer: Yash Mathur
