Characterized chiefly by its hopeful aesthetics of nature-technology balance, solarpunk is a relatively young genre and movement, and yet it has already secured a foothold among technologists who reject the otherwise prevailing prognoses of doom and dystopia. Combining aspects of liberal economics, bioregionalism, emerging technology, participatory civics, and various other ideas and traditions, solarpunk constitutes a syncretic and solutions-oriented “infraculture” geared toward a healthier future.
This exposé highlights a number of fonts which aesthetically encapsulate certain elements of the solarpunk ethos. Some lean into organic or floral themes, while others opt for more psychedelic or techno designs. These fonts use a variety of open licenses like the Open Font License and the Creative Commons licenses, but I nonetheless encourage readers to familiarize themselves with these licenses before utilizing these fonts.
I would like to thank the following individuals and institutions who, doubtlessly among many others, contributed to and/or enabled the beautiful open-source typographic work surveyed in this exposé: Julie Debeuf, Amira Karam, Lucas Descroix, Cédric Rossignol-Brunet, Raphaël Bastide, Wei Huang, Lucas Le Bihan, Walid Bouchouchi, Jérémy Landes, Dries Hamels, Olivia Marly, Florjent Nuhiji, Eva De Luca, Sangyé Bay Santos Ferreira, Muskan Jaffar, Spenta Parsa, Hasan Halilov, Birgita Siim, Alexander Le Sage de Fontenay, Kertu Kibal, Sigrid Liira, Maksym Kobuzan, Ariel Martín Pérez, Studio Cryo, the Lithuanian Cultural Council, the Estonian Academy of Arts, Creative Commons, and SIL International.
https://gitlab.com/bonjour-monde/fonderie/plantasia-typeface
By: Julie Debeuf
License: CC BY-ND 4.0
“Plantasia is a typeface family created by the students of the G5 Communication 360 class (LISAA Graphisme, Paris, Fr), during a type design initiation workshop given by Lucas Descroix (Bonjour Monde) in September 2022. Students were asked to create a display typeface based on a type of plant. In order to get an interesting conceptual distance they first gathered words and images, then explored abstract rhythms by hand.”
See also: Fantasia (music), phantasmagoria
https://gitlab.com/bonjour-monde/fonderie/plantasia-typeface
By: Amira Karam
License: CC BY-ND 4.0
Another font from the Plantasia family, Myrtillo is inspired by the myrtillocactus geometrizans and is evocative of psychedelia. Arguably another pillar of solarpunk culture is the therapeutic and enlightening potential of psychedelia, whether in new-age recreational capacities or in traditional ritualistic capacities. While solarpunk is still far from a mainstream subculture, its treatment of psychedelics, drawing from new age bohemian culture and more sober clinical studies alike, embodies a mature and well-adjusted perspective on the matter, as if asking “how can the alterations engendered by these substances contribute to our collective attempts at solving societal issues?”
It may be argued that solarpunk has a fixation on systemic technological solutions to perceived societal issues, despite the risks of more advanced technology enabling a more advanced control society. Arguably, the naivety of such an outlook is rooted in the likelihood of such technologies being developed, at societal scale, with primarily philanthropic motivations, as opposed to profit-maximizing motivations. Here, proper systems for funding public goods become integral, to ensure that the efforts going to support the public can be compensated and encouraged. Luckily, the solarpunk movement seems to aptly recognize the importance of establishing funding pipelines for public goods.
License: CC BY-ND 4.0
“Gotta Catch is a typeface family created by the students of the DNMADE ‘Graphisme augmenté’ (Lycée Jacques Prévert, Boulogne-Billancourt, Fr), during a type design initiation workshop given by Lucas Descroix in March 2021. Each student was asked to create a display typeface based on a type of Pokémon. In order to get an interesting conceptual distance they first gathered words and images, then explored abstract rhythms by hand. The idea was to delve into influences and inspirations outside the field of typography, in order to create new and surprising letterforms.”
By: Studio Cryo
License: SIL Open Font License
“Beržulis is an ongoing experimental type foundry project created by Studio Cryo with a focus on Lithuanian mythology and alphabet. Completed kerning, lowercase letters and other glyphs are still in the process. The project is funded by Lithuanian Cultural Council."
“Pizius in Lithuanian mythology is a God who protects love, marriage & sexual relations.”
One aspect of the broader solarpunk ethos is a respect toward regional customs and traditions, and how this localism can manifest via participatory governance. In what is arguably a paradox, solarpunk ostensibly embraces the prospect of technologically-facilitated global coordination infrastructure to solve planetary problems, while also emphasizing the need to allow local and indigenous people to participate in their own governance. Is there a way to reconcile these values into a cosmopolitan federalism, or would one, in reality, come at the expense of the other?
See also: Bioregionalism
By: Studio Cryo
License: SIL Open Font License
“Žaltys (pronounced zhal-tees), or the Grass Snake, is a household spirit in Lithuanian mythology, guardian of the home and a symbol of fertility.”
Another font from the Berzulis family, Zaltys embodies the solarpunk emphasis on flora, vegetation, and nature in general. Much of this emphasis is framed, implicitly or explicitly, as a ‘return to nature’ from the cloistered online existence which has become the norm over the last decade. In this respect, solarpunk rejects the claustrophobic alienation characteristic of the cyberpunk and dystopian visions which recently have tended to dominate our collective conception of the future. Zaltys also enters a graffiti-like territory of anti-legibility.
See also: Art Nouveau
https://cedr_r.gitlab.io/regularfont/
By: Cédric Rossignol-Brunet
License: SIL Open Font License
“Subpixel rendering is a way to increase the apparent resolution of a computer's liquid crystal display (LCD) or organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display by rendering pixels to take into account the screen type's physical properties. It takes advantage of the fact that each pixel on a color LCD is actually composed of individual red, green, and blue or other color subpixels to anti-alias text with greater detail or to increase the resolution of all image types on layouts which are specifically designed to be compatible with subpixel rendering.”
See also: Braindance (music)
https://typotheque.luuse.fun/specimen/avara
By: Raphaël Bastide, Wei Huang, Lucas Le Bihan, Walid Bouchouchi, Jérémy Landes
License: SIL Open Font License
The reason this font struck me as a solarpunk font is less obvious than the more forwardly organic or techno fonts. Here, there is a clean but playful riff on the classic serif style, and this sort of formal experimentation and tone I think are fairly representative of the wider solarpunk ethos. Like cyberpunk and various other punk derivatives and subcultures, solarpunk does fundamentally involve a subversion of conventions. Where punk was subversive as a statement of disillusionment and disenfranchisement, solarpunk subverts the gloomy despondency felt when faced with global challenges and irresponsible industry and political leaders.
By: B2-Dries Hamels, Olivia Marly, B2-Florjent Nuhiji
License: GNU
Barlow is another example of formal subversion, this time with a subtle psychedelic expression. It’s also a good example of how a given expression can be subversive without taking itself too seriously, not unlike solarpunk at large.
See also: Metamodernism
By: B2-Eva De Luca, Sangyé Bay santos Ferreira, Muskan Jaffar, Esa le 75
License: GNU
“Scorpius is a zodiac constellation located in the Southern celestial hemisphere, where it sits near the center of the Milky Way, between Libra to the west and Sagittarius to the east.”
Scorpius riffs on the conventional pixel font, bringing more of a sense of fluidity, as if seeking a middle ground between the digital and the natural.
By: B2-Spenta Parsa
License: GNU
Squared is another overtly techno font, and another example of formal subversion bordering on anti-legibility. Anti-legibility itself is arguably not characteristic of solarpunk, insofar as it reflects an esoteric attitude and inaccessible status, whereas solarpunk is more about inclusion and participation. That said, there is an art to bordering on the anti-legible, in the spirit of critically deconstructing established signifiers.
See also: Lettrism
https://www.suvatypefoundry.ee/hypha/
By: Hasan Halilov
License: When using fonts featured on SUVA Type Foundry platform please give credit to the author and if possible share your work with us.
“Hypha is a typeface that explores organic movement and shape. It is based on different fungi development and their specific filaments that make up the fungi’s body. The typeface also draws a lot of inspiration from archival Greek and Bulgarian typefaces and letterings from the second half of the twentieth century.”
See also: The Mycopunk Manifesto, the Common Mycelial Network
https://www.suvatypefoundry.ee/ketchup-addict/
By: Birgita Siim
License: When using fonts featured on SUVA Type Foundry platform please give credit to the author and if possible share your work with us.
“The font reflects emptiness in stomach and soul of a Ketchup Addict, who is constantly dreaming of ketchup.”
Ketchup Addict embodies the playfulness and formal subversion of solarpunk, with an aesthetic hint of psychedelia, but does not enter the territory of nature or technology.
https://www.suvatypefoundry.ee/heavy/
By: Alexander Le Sage de Fontenay
License: When using fonts featured on SUVA Type Foundry platform please give credit to the author and if possible share your work with us.
“Heavy represents my understanding of “contemporary”, by channelling 1960s and 1970s history, youth- and subculture movements, music and film. A display typeface which references the past to create something better.”
Like Ketchup Addict, Heavy isn’t solarpunk by virtue of aesthetic reference to technology or nature, but by virtue of a playful and unorthodox defiance of the status quo. Heavy is more overtly psychedelic, embracing the history of counter-cultural movements while conveying an optimistic attitude about the future.
See also: Oz, “the most controversial magazine of the 60s”
https://www.suvatypefoundry.ee/flowstate/
By: Kertu Kibal
License: When using fonts featured on SUVA Type Foundry platform please give credit to the author and if possible share your work with us.
“In positive psychology, a flow state, also known as colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.”
Flowstate is like Barlow-elasticc in that it has an irregular cadence and off-kilter form, arguably another example of formal defiance. It also borders of psychedelic in that it makes reference to heightened mental states, and it also represents solarpunk’s embrace of science and scientific modes of understanding the world.
See also: Flow (psychology)
https://www.suvatypefoundry.ee/chaos/
By: Sigrid Liira
License: When using fonts featured on SUVA Type Foundry platform please give credit to the author and if possible share your work with us.
“Relationship between humans and technology and everything in between.”
Near the apogee of anti-legibility, Chaos pushes the boundaries of what we can interpret as glyphs and text, and does so in quite a cyber-positive fashion. The tone here is less clearly playful but still quite subversive.
See also: Hyperreality
https://www.tunera.xyz/fonts/nyght-serif/
By: Maksym Kobuzan
License: SIL Open Font License
“Nyght Serif is a contemporary serif with a spicy character. Its contrasting forms combine smooth and sharp curves, like blade serifs and spurs. Work on it began during the study of the well-known typefaces designed by William Caslon. However, under the influence of calligraphy and modern serifs, its design has been greatly transformed.”
Nyght Serif is a fluid and funky subversion of the otherwise stoic serif style, but does not thematically encapsulate the organic, psychedelic or technological elements of solarpunk beyond this. If anything, it touches on some of the austurbane-adjacent strains of solarpunk aesthetics.
See also: Austurbane
By: Ariel Martín Pérez
License: SIL Open Font License
“Brassia’s design is inspired by Solarpunk, a science fiction genre that looks towards a brighter future based on clean energy production, usually with a distinctive art-nouveau aesthetic. Its letters were drawn by taking a freestyle approach to the latin alphabet, intended to look ancient and futuristic at the same time, with a translation contrast that is typical of pen writing. Some of the letter's designs are also based on ancient and vernacular signs found in the city of Brussels.”
The author here even explicitly references solarpunk, albeit as more of a science-fiction genre than a proto-political or cultural movement. This marriage of the ancient with the futuristic is arguably another calling card of solarpunk, indicating a respect for cultures and traditions across space and time.
This exposé was collated by Clinamenic LLC, and originally self-published on t2. If you enjoyed this exposé, please consider subscribing to this newsletter, and following Clinamenic LLC on X, Farcaster, and Lens.
Clinamenic LLC
Over 100 subscribers
Love this <3
Read my solarpunk typography guide “inline” within a frame! https://solosalon.clinamenic.com/solarpunk-typography
@clinamenic fixed the custom domain bug, works now! https://solosalon.clinamenic.com/solarpunk-typography
100 $DEGEN
A Solarpunk Typography Exposé, republished via @paragraph !