Karnemelk

Karnemelk is a typeface I made for the title and credits of a friend's thesis film. Loosely based on the letterforms of Times New Roman, sporadic reversed serifs and reversed contrast give a look that's not quite cohesive. I was inspired by the plight of the film's protagonist, who struggles to find a unique creative identity for himself in a seemingly oversaturated field.

The Latin characters of the alphabet including 26 capital and 26 lowercase letters, Arabic numerals, the period, exclamation, comma, and question mark glyphs, and round and square brackets.

Large? Small? In between?

Karnemelk functions at both large and small type sizes. At large sizes, its insecurities are easy to pick at. At small sizes, Karnemelk blends in with other transitional serifs, without many unique characteristics that stand out.

The typeface Karnemelk shown in varying sizes from largest to smallest.

Reversed Serifs

Serifs on ascenders and descenders go the opposite way from the traditional. As a result, gaps must be cut from the letters to make more room, notably on lowercase n, r, and m.

Laterally Reversed Contrast

Where letters traditionally have thick and thin strokes, the placement of these are switched, creating the appearance of letters facing towards the left.

Unintuitive Overlaps

In letters without noticeable serif reversals, gaps are also used to show a non-standard stroke order to writing characters.

Notes on the Film

The project that Karnemelk was made for follows a young filmmaker who, after attending a mass screening of a famous director's new film, gets the chance to ask for advice on how to become successful. The director simply answers, "be yourself", causing the main character to grow increasingly isolated from others as he attempts to extract authenticity from himself.

© Benya Sutyanyong 2022