Variable Typeface for Moonbase

A typeface born from a deliberate software crash, now a NASA mission emblem

Moonbase Var is a variable typeface expanding on Cornel Windlin's Moonbase Alpha (1991/1992), originally produced for FUSE's '(Dis-)information' issue. Windlin deliberately crashed Adobe Type Manager, then scanned and redrew the corrupted pixel output of Akzidenz Grotesk printed on a cheap Apple StyleWriter. In 2021, Weichi He reversed the process—reducing the letterforms back to square pixels while making curved corners fully circular—then united both states as interpolation poles in a variable font. Font engineering and mastering were handled by Alphabet, Berlin.

Set in Moonbase Var

Insights

The original typeface was generated indirectly: crashing ATM caused the StyleWriter to print the unoptimised screen rendering of an Akzidenz Grotesk sample as coarse pixels, which were then scanned and redrawn as the actual glyph set.
Windlin experimented with rounding the square pixel corners, a decision He took to its logical extreme in 2021 by making those corners fully circular.
The variable font's interpolation axis literally re-enacts the typeface's origin story, moving between crude pixel forms and rounded letterforms.
NASA used Moonbase Alpha for the emblem of the 2021 Perseverance Mars Mission, closing a loop the typeface's retrofuturistic name had opened three decades earlier.