CHIFFRE is an uppercase modular display typeface informed by Charles Mavelot’s book of monograms Livre de Chiffres à Double Traits. Rather than reproducing ornament, it parameterises Mavelot’s double-stroke logic—twin paths, controlled interlace, and symmetry—into a contemporary system. The project explores doubling, mirroring, and interweaving strokes, negotiating the balance between legibility and ornament, as well as traditional craftsmanship and modern restraint.

By translating the ornate character of historical double-stroke monograms into systematic forms, CHIFFRE embraces the tension between precision and looseness—maintaining legibility while permitting expressive complexity. Standardising a script process within a digital system has enabled purposeful experimentation within clear constraints. Those constraints became generative, encouraging me to treat history and craftsmanship as principles rather than templates, and to articulate an ornamental, legibility-aware language of duality.

The final specimen clarifies the typeface’s character and the logic that holds it together. What began as double strokes and mirrored initials has become a coherent system built on a clear skeleton, an adaptive “ribbon” envelope, and a disciplined interlace grammar. Each letter is constructed around relationships—gap, phase, weave order, and slant—so ornament serves structure, yielding a balanced, sculptural ribbon texture rather than casual brushwork. The book sits in dialogue with Mavelot’s Livre de Chiffres à Double Traits, translating the cipher’s duality and interlacing into a parametric typography that moves fluently between precision and ornament without losing its core identity.