Modern Electrics Revival | 2nd Font Release

Available here at Creative Market and Behance.

MODERN ELECTRICS, the second resurrected typeface by GiGiDesigns, is a monument to the dazzling early electric age. An era of inquirers delighted in sharing homespun experiments to a diaspora of like-minded enthusiasts. It’s at home doodled in the margins of the first electrical magazine for everyone- whose name it shares, & the source of its original 11 letterforms.

It wears an Lovelace Has A Posse tee and yearns to be scribbled in ballpoint blue. It was soldered into the desk which launched Amazing Stories. It hands you a blindfold? You spin around 3x and put a finger down on a map. Kit up. Adventuring begins at dawn.

MODERN ELECTRICS includes 1 font style in .OTF format and comes QWERTY keyboard ready.

• 26 upper case

• 26 lower case

• 29 special characters

• Supports 5 currencies: Dollar, Pound, Euro, Yen, & Yuan

It was a joy to piece this together from the masthead. I skimmed through the MODERN ELECTRICS archive and out of all the pages only the covers from 1908 to partway through 1910 use this font.

First issue of Modern Electrics magazine, April 1908

Clearly hand doodled, every dart in every letter was a little off. Standardizing the forms and expanding beyond the original 11 letters was a fun puzzle.

I've come to call the mascot character DC Skanks. A reddit commenter said a draft version of this font looked almost like the old Reddy Kilowatt mascot for Alabama Power Company since 1926. He's still in use. Hence the legally distinct DC Skanks. His face inspired by a notation for DC current.

DC Skanks and inspirations