"Yield Strength" Typeface - 2026 Biennale

How can an identity be cohesive and identifiable despite the intent to have no foundational visual identity system? The Yield Strength identity led by Melbourne’s Base Design team and informed by Ellie Buttrose (AGSA curator) sought to create an identity that was ever-changing and would never return to its original state.

Joining two other Counter Forms members, Vincent Chan and Rob Janes, I was integrated into the team due to my RMIT Thesis involving programmatic typography. Our goal was to create a server-based program that would deliver intervals of new typefaces for Base and for the public to use, based on constantly changing data from open-source APIs. Working with the skeletal forms of the already developed Protocol typefaces, their forms are altered and published on a 24-hour basis according to the data collected from the S&P500, Wind Speeds, barometric pressure, surface pressure and time. Time being the key factor in deterioration, which will ultimately render the typeface illegible by the end of the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art duration, linking back to the concept of Yield Strength: “the maximum stress a material can withstand before undergoing permanent, plastic deformation”.

All typefaces are available for download and use on yield-strength.com Please read the EULA before use.

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