Boffins, gotta love ’em.

One has to wonder how many fractions of a point their typeface sizes are. The first time anyone would need an SI prefix for a point?

If we (incorrectly) use the 42-rung length as the size of the typeface, then it's at 41 μpoint.

I guess they did not do that in InDeaign.

My DNA reads "If you can read this, you are standing too close to me".

It'll be interesting if serifs evolve.

It'll be interesting if serifs evolve.

Swashes! ;-)

Puh-leeze.

Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering

How about Sensibly Inspired Engineering. All this little venture proves is that, feeling rather godlike, some scientists have succeeded in torturing the building blocks of life into predetermined shapes, without regard for the consequences. Personally, I shudder to think of what kind of life form might emerge if you strung these letterform Frankensteins into a seven-letter sequence that said “be fruitful and multiply yourself”—but not those exact words.

(Props to Woody Allen)

Hey, don't knock genetic engineering. It's what I madly wanted to get into, but was 3-4 decades too early.

hhp

Reckon 'DNA strands' sounds a mite more impressive than 'proteins'.

Was about to create a new post about this news, but will instead simply point you to this alternative news source:
http://gizmodo.com/5914780/harvard-scientists-make-graphic-designers-loo...

The letter blocks are 64-by-103 nanometers.

Also, the article in Nature is here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v485/n7400/full/nature11075.html

This also makes me wish IBM had gone ahead and made a font from the work they did on the atomic logo:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/vintage_4506VV1003.html
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/photo/28500.wss

Not sure Stanford could have completed the task with their even smaller technique:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090130154918.htm