I introduced Alepholon on May 17, 2006. The name is synthetic, a mix of “alphabet” with the Latin-style suffix “-on” to make it sound scientific. The design itself was a by-product of an early draft of Domyouji.

At the time, I was working on modifications to some of my stencil fonts for a customer who needed them adapted for plasma cutting. That put me in the mindset of thinking about stencil practicality: struts had to be thick and strategically placed so the letters wouldn’t fall apart. Alepholon came directly out of that context. The heavy struts were designed so the font could, in theory, work as a functional stencil.

This is a good example of my design philosophy: technical restrictions create style. That’s always been true historically. But I also realized you can invent technical restrictions, and the exercise still generates style. With Alepholon, I played with strut placement in ways that felt unconventional compared to other techno-stencil designs at the time. It wasn’t revolutionary, but it pushed me to approach stencil lettering from a different angle.

Alepholon never got much attention, and I don’t recall ever seeing it in use. In a way, it’s an orphan in my catalog. The commissioned project I was developing in parallel evolved into Domyouji, which went on to be used by BioWare in the Mass Effect game series as a companion to Korataki. By contrast, Alepholon got left behind, even though I’ve always thought it deserved a closer look.