Typeface Design for Body Type
Human bodies as a typographic system, not just an art stunt
Body Type, designed by Peter Bİlak with contributors Valentina Scaglia and Lisa van Bommel, translates human bodies into a functional type system in two weights. Released in 2011, it builds on Bilak's earlier Dance Writer installation and references a lineage of human-alphabet art from Peter Flötner (1534) to Anthon Beeke (1970). The family is delivered as OpenType SBIX colour fonts—using the same embedded bitmap mechanism as Apple Emoji—and covers all 26 Latin letters.
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Insights
- The project evolved from Bilak's Dance Writer installation, which mapped letters to dance movements, before extending that logic to human-body photography.
- SBIX format stores multiple-resolution bitmap images inside a single font file, enabling colour rendering in Adobe apps and web browsers without vector outlines.
- The 26-letter Latin coverage is a deliberate constraint: the human body cannot legibly form numerals, punctuation, or diacritics.
- The family ships in two weights, distinguishing styles within a photographic glyph system.
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