R-I-B-BI composes the nuclear font family – Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic – on each side of the digital divide by utilizing the mechanical limitations and digital manipulations of a bygone era.

As typography transitioned from analog to digital in the mid-twentieth century, a desire for complex typesetting challenged technological constraints. Employing various typographic cheats, writers would compose images, symbols, missing characters, weights, and styles. Occasionally these hacks would become established as norms, many of which still influence contemporary typography.

The typeface is released alongside a pair of open-source Python tools for Drawbot. The Screenwriter and Typewriter produces animated sequences from a tagged manuscript. The tools are developed by Wim Wepster.

The R-I-B-BI family explores the mechanics of early modern typographic technologies and the approximations used to create complex text with limited tools. R-I-B-BI pulls the levers and turns the gears, reveling in manuscript touch-ups, mathematical blackboard bolds, double strikes, underscores, rotated sorts, amputated appendages, faux digital synthesization, and early ASCII art.

The family is split into two parts: R-I-B-BI Typewriter and R-I-B-BI, each with the canonical four styles, further expanded with experimental use of OpenType functionality. We’re eager to see how you will use it!