Stormé
A Futuristic-Gothic Typeface Ignited by Historic Uprising | Type Design, Typography, Graphic Design
Stormé was the culminating output from my Advanced Typography elective back in 2020. Given free rein to come up with whatever font design to make—in the middle of the pandemic, no less—I took the opportunity to conceptualize from a personal standpoint to cope.
I had been reading Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg at the time, and while not a featured personality, Stormé DeLarverie was an adjacent figure that came with diving deep into the book's themes. Specifically, he was a prominent icon of the Stonewall Uprising in 1969, whose legacy I personally found moving—thus deciding to have the typeface as his namesake.
Eponym Stormé DeLarverie
Software Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, FontLab 7
Classic, Bold, and Resistant
If there are three words I would use to describe, not just Stormé, but the Uprising and its community, they would be: classic, bold, and resistant. Classic for its recognition and value as a milestone in civil rights; Bold for its unabashed and valiant nature to enact change; and Resistant—not to change—but to systemic vulnerability. These words captured the essence of the movement, and ones I would go back to throughout the conceptualization and design process.
In my initial explorations of the letterforms, I focused on playing with the forms—pushing asymmetry and incorporating odd shapes for serifs and terminals—while keeping them bold.
Eventually, I settled on specific glyphs to continue refining and standardized the different serif and terminal forms. The terminals and serifs generally center around a geometric structure of perfect squares, circles, and diagonals. From there, it was a matter of cleaning up the forms with ink and finalizing different widths according to each letter.
Contrasting Serifs, Uniform Strokes, and Open Counters
Upon further refinement, three highlighting characteristics stood out: contrasting serifs, uniform strokes, and open counters—respective to the aforementioned descriptors.
Concave and slanted serifs provide not just a sense of sharpness and class, but also a variety of form that extends to the diversity in the community. On the other hand, bold and uniform strokes demonstrate a sense of strength to the injustices that sparked the movement, while open counters expand on the systemic vulnerability that precedes the need for resistance.
All together, these qualities keep the letters cohesive while faithful to its context.
Stormé In Action
Outcomes and Next Steps
Since the elective was held in half the timeframe it usually would've been, twelve selected letters were the focus of the design process. That, however, didn’t limit the class from experimenting with other letters if time permitted it. With that, I attempted to finish the rest of the alphabet and included them in this prototype.
Researching and ideating for this elective was one of the highlights of my semester and eventually, I hope to refine the font and include more glyphs such as numbers and punctuations.
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