Pentagon Memorial Typography

KBAS, otherwise known as, Kaseman Beckman Architectural Strategies was the commissioned architecture firm that designed the Pentagon memorial. They brought in MM to help design the typography and overall typographic layout of the environment and its specific components. This was obviously a lofty project that we knew would be experienced by millions of people. We thus explored finding a neutral typeface that had a bold point of view and harmonized with the memorial design. We chose a condensed sans serif for spatial reasons as the longest name on the units was 38 characters long and had to fit within a tight space. We also chose a serif face for the "zero line" that represents the crossing into the actual memorial and has September 11, 2001 9:37am. This serif only exists on the zero line as a quiet moment and to contrast the condensed sans serif you see elsewhere.