06/07 2 min 49

Alternate

Alternate, a typeface for mobile phone screen.
Alternate has been especially designed to deal with the better resolution of mobile phone screens. Moreover, in order to enhance the readibility of the SMS phenomenon, Alternate has a set of phonetic caracters, the phonecaps and phonenumbers. Shortcuts are becoming new ways of communication. The need of a typeface became clear.

Two things are essential in SMS:
First, you have to write fast because you don’t have much time or you are maybe with friends. The first filter of Alternate transforms SMS shortcuts in academic english.

Second, you need to be economical because you don’t have as much space as you want. Only 160 characters. The second filter transforms academic english in SMS shortcuts.

Alternate has been first created on a grid of pixels as a bitmap font to optimised the curves for its original need, the screen medium.