BTC Diamond OCR
Bad Type Club · Matt Scott Barnes · 2024
A single-weight OCR revival drawn from a fragment of Diamond Wooden Type Works material held at the Letterform Archive, rendered with hand-built precision.
About
Matt Scott Barnes sourced the design from a small snippet of historical Diamond Wooden Type Works lettering, reconstructing its boxy, mechanically precise aesthetic by hand. The result sits between authentic OCR convention and artisanal type construction, retaining the rectilinear rigidity of early optical character recognition fonts while introducing a degree of warmth absent from purely digital revivals. Released free in version 1.0 as of August 2024.
Classification
An OCR-inspired display typeface with boxy, rectilinear letterforms derived from early optical character recognition technology. The mechanical, grid-based construction places it firmly in the OCR subcategory, though its handcrafted origins give it a display character.