Darius Ou

𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘪𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘳𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘴 The earliest specimens of the undeciphered script 𝘭𝘪𝘦 were discovered carved into a remote stone basin at Air Mata Buaya in southwestern Malaysia in 1936. Long misidentified as pictographic, 𝘭𝘪𝘦 is now understood to be logographic (or semasiographic), in which individual characters represent discrete concepts, while associative compounds express complex ideas. It is likely a variant of early Austronesian scripts and is attributed to a geographically isolated population in Southeast Asia, referred to as the “Collapsers”. In 2026, following the discovery of a newly unearthed site in southern Singapore, additional specimens of 𝘭𝘪𝘦 were identified and further studied, offering new insights into the culture [📷3] and language of the Collapsers. Collapsers are known to be wayfarers with intimate knowledge of the lie of the land. It is believed that they held a worldview in which spatial and temporal relations collapsed into a single concept, with the same terms used to describe both direction and time. Unlike many languages that organise time through anterior–posterior metaphors (the past “behind” and the future “ahead”), Collapsers referred to the past as “above” and the future as “below.” This orientation [📷16] is thought to derive from phenomenology of decay and ruin, in which fallen [📷17] or collapsing forms marked the perceived direction of time —entropy as the arrow of time. To the Collapsers, time is a ruin. [3] Collapsers are also believed to have held a markedly romantic sensibility, in which the terms for “love” and “time” were frequently interchangeable, with no clear distinction between “falling in love” and “falling in time”. For the Collapsers, to fall in love is to fall with time—irreversible, inexorable, inevitable. [16] It is known that Collapsers view the ground as a bulwark against the flow of time. Several burial sites suggest that in the Collapser culture, bodies were interred lying face down, so the dead may look after the living even if time stands still for them. [17] The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli ⎹ / ⟋ ⎽⎼⎻⎺ ⎽⎽⎼⎼ ____ Typeface for @nattiecoo @city_of_new_ruins , Poem by @kyatos Photo @spiderkats

高 山 氵㐬 水 is a typographic work about paths and spaces. As a louvred spatial divider, the work mediates light and space—obscuring sight and shaping place. /\/\/ The Chinese writing system is built from fundamental strokes (笔画), the smallest structural units that combine to form characters. Each stroke occupies a position within the character’s spatial composition, with a prescribed direction and largely fixed sequential order. This standardisation for mark-making exemplifies the Chinese written language's emphasis on spatial coherence and the embodied logic of writing. Milling procedures rely on Computer Numerical Control (CNC), which typically operates using line-path instructions. By applying computer vision to convert Chinese characters into single-line paths compatible with CNC milling processes, it becomes possible to approximate the logic (order of strokes is randomised) of the Chinese stroke system within machinic movements. Milled characters reveal individual strokes of the characters in layers, while also leaving an iridescent surface—the result of micro diffraction gratings on the aluminum that catch and reflect light at varying angles. [4-6] Back panels feature an abstract, stroke-based scenery "painting". [14, 15] Chinese-Hershey font script by LingDong- on GitHub. Named in reference to a collection of vector fonts developed by Allen Vincent Hershey. Hershey fonts are stroke-based, designed initially for cathode ray tube displays. Such stroke-based linearisation remain rare and difficult for Chinese fonts, which often contains tens of thousands of glyphs in the character set. /\/\/ Production by @maatchaagreenteaa Special thanks to @rafiabdullah.apt @brozm @j__neo Photography by @jonathantyl Fabrication by @cutanything.co Commissioned by @temenggongsg Artists-In-Residence #graphicdesign #typography

Happy to announce that CORPUS, my second 3D printed book has been acquired by Singapore Art Museum @singaporeartmuseum and will enter the permanent Design Collection. --- CORPUS Dating: 2022-23 Dimension: 17.0 x 10.5 x 2.5 cm Medium / Materials: 3D printed/Thermoplastic polyurethane Edition: Unique Gaussian splatting/Photogrammetry with @jonathantyl #graphicdesign #3dprintedbooks #3dprinting

Manual is a fully 3D-printed book bearing raised marks of the very G-code (partial) used to fabricate itself, embedding within the object the instructions for its own replication. Designed to be printed in a single sequence using an @hyper.press experimental method that bypasses post-production, the book materialises directly on the print bed in fully bound form. Manual was launched in Toronto at SESSION organised by @final.research at @newsystems_ , where the book was sent digitally and 3D printed on site. Research & development w/ @mushroomhunting . Special thanks @devanshcshah . 📸: @jonathantyl — In 2008, a printer developed by the RepRap project successfully 3D printed 48% of its own (100% of printable) components, marking one of the first demonstrations of machine self-replication. Its long-term ambition is a 100% self-replicating machine capable of printing complete copies of itself. Founded in 2005 by Adrian Bowyer alongside collaborators including Michael S. Hart, RepRap inherited an ethos already central to Hart’s earlier work on Project Gutenberg: the decentralised circulation of reproducible books. Hart is widely regarded as the inventor of the e-book, having produced some of the first digital books. The relationship between self-replicating machines and books is not merely coincidental. Both function as technologies for the replication and dissemination of human knowledge and endeavours. Manual traces this shared trajectory between self-replicating systems and digital publishing by proposing the electronically transmissible and printable book object. Unlike the e-book, where only textual content is transmissible, this Replicable Book (r-book) enables the replication of both content and physical form. While the r-book can assume the form of any type of book, Manual consists solely of machine-readable code, positioning itself primarily as a book for machines rather than human readers. The first version of Manual contains only 2.5% of its own G-code. Current FFF print resolutions and text scales produce a recursive code-to-volume ratio in which the self-descriptive G-code cannot yet fully account for the pathing data of the structure and its marks.

Website design and build for @brozm artwork HEX STATE SERVER developed as part of his Virtual Residency at @kulturlandsgemeinde . HEX STATE SERVER:EXEGESIS is a website that operates as an oracular interface for generating micro-fictions called "hex-states". Each Hex State offers either an omen of a possible future or an echo of an alternate present. These 64 states are produced through a system derived from I Ching divination, where six units (broken or unbroken lines) are arranged into hexagrams to yield divinatory readings, adapted for the contemporary context. Each hex-state unfolds through a composite of moving image, text, and sound as well as the behaviors of the two “daemon” avatars which serve as divinatory guardians for the server itself. In the traditional I Ching system, each hexagram already carries a canonical meaning. A custom typeface designed for the work, however, shifts the focus to how meaning is formed in another register by morphing between two states—hexagrams (divinatory symbols) and letters (linguistic symbols). By hovering over the text, users reveal latent meanings embedded within the site. Modular blocks form the site's underlying structure, fluidly resizing and stacking as content reveals or conceals itself according to the current state and user interaction. HEX STATE SERVER: EXEGESIS By Brandon Tay @brozm Graphic design by @darius_ou Web Build and design by @okok.services Music by YS @y_systems @l_professionel @born_slip_e

Custom variable font, visual identity and graphics designed for @brozm 's artwork HEX STATE SERVER. The typeface recasts the Yijing (I Ching) as a proto-computational system. Here, Chinese divination, specifically the hexagram system, operates as a proto-digital logic: a binary combinatoric structure (six broken - ‎- or unbroken — lines) that translates the world’s indeterminacy into readable, actionable states. This logic is inserted into the history of computation through the Unicode Standard, an encoding system that digitises the world’s writing systems by systematising linguistic indeterminacy into discrete units. As a result, each glyph is derived through numerical affinities between the Yijing’s hexagram index (King Wen sequence, the oldest index) and the Unicode hexadecimal encodings of Latin characters (C0 + Basic Latin block)—constructed using the same binary units. - ‎- — [3] A circular King Wen Sequence index linked to Unicode's Basic Latin block: hexagrams to hexadecimals [4] 'K' and 'Z' are the only letters in the Basic Latin block that coincide at Hexagram 15: ‘K’ = U+004B and ‘Z’ = U+005A, which reduce to (4+11) and (5+10) respectively. Notably, the King Wen sequence (文王卦序) that underpins this numerological mapping is attributed to King Wen ( 周文王) of the Zhou dynasty. The coincidence can be read as 'K'ing of 'Z'hou occupying the same register when interpreted in the Hanyu Pinyin romanisation. [5] Vinyl application at the gallery, where letters are placed over their hexagram counterparts. [10-13] UV-light activated vinyl texts in the space Curated by @niche.stitution x @rafiabdullah.apt Presented by Square Street Gallery, in collaboration with Yeo Workshop @squarestreetgallery @yeoworkshop Exhibition design: @amirulnbm 20 March – 2 May 2026 Photo credit: Jonathan Tan @jonathantyl #graphicdesign #variablefont #iching

building an archive, an inventory, a numbered list, a taxonomy, a glossary, a lexicon, a lore, a vector, a hypothesis, a research, and a practice for 3D printed books. hyperpre.ss (link in bio) beta site Initiated in 2021, hyperpress is a programme of research spanning 3D printing, graphic design, and publishing—producing 3D printed books, objects, and texts. The research traces the ontology of print by situating additive manufacturing within the lineage of the printing press, where 3D printed books materialise a counterfactual trajectory. #3dprintedbooks #graphicdesign

FINAL RESEARCH presents SESSION, an initiative with the goal of creating a space for global design discourse through live lecture, platforming people and practices that critically engage with design and research. SESSION is hosted at New Stadium @newsystems_ in Toronto with our guest speakers joining us virtually.

[INFORMATION] Our first guest is Darius Ou @darius_ou , a Singapore-based graphic designer whose practice focuses on typography, motion design and graphic lore. He runs hyperpress @hyper.press , a research initiative and body of work exploring the intersections of 3D printing, graphic design and publishing—producing 3D printed books, objects and texts. He is a recipient of the ADC New York Young Guns 21 award, and the Tokyo Type Directors Club Annual Award 2026. [DATE] Wed 04.29.2026 [LOGISTICS] Darius will be giving a 75 minute talk followed by an extended Q&A period with time for social after. Doors open at 7PM with talks beginning at 7:45. Guests are welcome to bring beverages. Snacks and non-alcoholic drinks will be provided. [RSVP] Seats are limited. Follow the link in bio to RSVP and guarantee entry. This event is PWYC, a $5 donation is suggested to cover costs and labour. FR_12_P TALK LUMA.COM/DARIUSOU #DARIUSOU #FINALRESEARCH #NEW

🅂🄾🅄🄽🄳 🄾🄽 @auditoria.sg is an art festival that focuses on sound as a medium. What happens when sound drifts across senses, becoming something felt, seen, or imagined? Presented by @louintrgnt and @sugarchains as part of Singapore Art Week 2026. A custom variable font underpins this audio-visual identity system exploring typography as a medium through which sound moves. Developed to integrate with the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) protocol, the font maps the character table to the MIDI note table. Each word, through its character combinatorics, generates a unique audio signature. Conversely, audio can be converted into text and visualised through this font. An on-site activation features an interactive projection of the festival wordmark that reacts to movement at the entrance, placing each visitor as a pulse propagating through the type medium. Sound identity with @louintrgnt Design Partner: @tonewentities Photography by @jonathantyl #graphicdesign #variablefont

𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘪𝘦 𝘶𝘱𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 Due to their worldview of time as flowing downwards, the Collapsers believed that the closer they wrote to the ground, the longer the mark would endure [📷8]. For this reason, the more important a word, the later it was spoken or written. Certain 𝘭𝘪𝘦 glyphs could be elongated [📷6] to express a longing for time or permanence, while others were rotated 📷[5] to signify melancholy or regret. Although the 𝘭𝘪𝘦 script does not depend on spacings between words for grammatical function, Collapsers were known to introduce deliberate gaps [📷9] between words, not for clarity, but as poetic gestures intended to slow the act of reading. To the Collapsers, every word inscribed on a surface is akin to burying a fragment of its writer beneath. The longer a reader lingered, the further the part of the writer endured in time. Regarded by some contemporary linguists as a rare instance of linguistic relativity, the 𝘭𝘪𝘦 script appears to have developed before a fully stabilised spoken form, with indications that certain concepts evolved in tandem with the script [📷15]. As such, the Collapsers were a deeply literate society, privileging writing over speech. The Collapsers held the belief that while spoken words are carried by the wind, written words are carried by time. [📷10] Recently excavated artefacts dating back to the 12th century suggest that the Collapsers were skilled craftspeople who produced ivory-carved charms and jewellery modelled after 𝘭𝘪𝘦 glyphs. [📷14] The Collapsers believed that the invocation of a name in written form had apotropaic functions. As such, the majority of artefacts recovered to date are charms carrying names. ____ _ _ _ ⎽⎽⎽⎽ Typeface for @nattiecoo , Poem by @kyatos , Photos by @kai_mclaughlin and @spiderkats

METALLY (2025) has been selected for the Tokyo Type Directors Club Annual Award 2026 @tokyotdc as Excellent Work for the Experimental Work Category. This marks an important milestone for the development of 3D printed books and re-emphasises their lineage in the printing press and tradition of graphic design. Beyond destabilising the ontology of print, 3D printed books interrogate the production processes and workflows of book-objects by retracing historical practices while speculating on their future. METALLY is a culmination of various experimental processes developed over years from previous titles (and from countless failures), such as flexible 3D printed substrates, purpose-built typeface and methodology for 3D printing (termed path-trapping), Multi-material mechanical interlocking for printing images (termed clotting) and other methods documented at @hyper.press . Special thanks to @feelers_feelers @joandkapi for the support, @hiddnur , @sojamo , @msjospark , Dr Aprille, for the invaluable guidance. Photography @jonathantyl Talent @suvalidh #3dprintedbooks #graphicdesign

Prototype book-objects These book-objects are 3D printed upright, from spine to fore-edge. Every piece is littered with randomly generated artefacts produced by the printer's pathing system, exploring accidental mark-making through the machines's vibration, belt patten ringing, and pathing mechanics. Through randomised start and end points per layer, each book-object is printed with a unique path. These artefacts are often perceived as printing flaws—here they are part of @hyper.press machine's unique signature through specific software settings and hardware intricacies. The logomark on the cover is made using a "x-for-z" method, where relief marks are printed through movements on the x-axis rather than z-axis—a maneuver only possible through 3D printing the book-object upright instead of cover-flat on surface. These exercises serves as a proof-of-concept for a process for 3D printing a book all at once. Each piece is produced from the same filament spool that was used to produce previous @hyper.press titles. Available @labour_block . While spool lasts. Limited drop @labour_block