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The Osh Gallery Alphabet

The Osh Gallery Alphabet

A new alphabet featuring original letters and symbols designed by 24 Pentagram Partners from the London, New York, Austin and Berlin offices.

For the Osh Gallery Alphabet, the Pentagram partners have created entirely new letterforms for the 26 letters of the alphabet, as well as the ampersand and full-stop.

The Alphabet is all about exploring each letter on its own terms, without any pressure to make the set cohere into a usable typeface

The Osh Gallery Alphabet is a reimagining of the Conways' Photosetting Alphabet, originally created for the company in 1974 by Pentagram's founding partner Colin Forbes, and currently hanging in Pentagram's London office.

The colours came out of a desire to keep the chromatic spirit of the Conway alphabet alive, but without slipping into a straight Seventies pastiche.

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About the project

A new exhibition at Osh Gallery presents a freshly designed alphabet composed of original letters and symbols created by 24 Pentagram partners from studios in London, New York, Austin, and Berlin.

Developed by Pentagram in collaboration with King & McGaw, the Osh Gallery Alphabet revisits and reinterprets the Conways’ Photosetting Alphabet, first produced in 1974 by Pentagram co-founder Colin Forbes. The original work is still displayed in Pentagram’s London studio.

Photosetting, a technique that used photographic methods to produce type on film or paper, was widely used during the 1970s. Conways, a London-based studio, provided this service and played a key role in the transition from traditional hot-metal type to digital typography, significantly expanding the creative possibilities available to designers.

In the original Conways’ screenprints, each of the 26 letters was rendered using a different existing typeface, with the form of each letter directly reflecting that font—for instance, the letter “C” appeared in Cooper Black. In contrast, the Osh Gallery Alphabet introduces entirely new designs for each of the 26 letters, along with additional symbols such as the ampersand and full stop.

As Pentagram partner Angus Hyland explains, the idea for the project emerged from the presence of Colin Forbes’s original posters in the studio, which continue to attract attention for their bold use of color and distinctly 1970s typographic style. The reinterpretation offered an opportunity to create a lasting body of work for Osh Gallery—one that could be displayed between exhibitions and serve as a marker of the partnership at this moment in time.

A key distinction between the original and the new version lies in their purpose. While Forbes’s posters focused on showcasing existing typefaces and the flexibility enabled by emerging technologies of the time, the updated project shifts attention toward individual exploration. Each letter is treated as a standalone piece, without the requirement to function together as a cohesive typeface.

The color approach retains the vibrant, chromatic energy of the original Conway alphabet, while avoiding a direct replication of its 1970s aesthetic.

The prints are offered in four different sizes, available framed or unframed, and can be purchased through kingandmcgaw.com.

The Osh Gallery Alphabet is on display at Pentagram London’s gallery space in Islington, London N1, until Thursday 2 April.

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