Extracts from Alphabetical Playground.
Recontextualised.
A set of alphabets that draw freely from a range of historic scripts such as Arabic, Armenian, Burmese, Chinese, Coptic, Ethiopic, Greek, Hebrew, Hiragana, Javanese, Katakana, Malayalam, Runic, Tamil, Thai and Tibetan. Every character, symbol and sign is a re-appropriation of an original source glyph, offering a new perspective on familiar writing systems. Recontextualised explores how changing the cultural context of letterforms can reshape their relationships and meanings.
Extracts from Alphabetical Playground.
Cursive.
A geometric response to traditional cursive handwriting, Cursive explores scripts in which each letter is formed using a single, continuous stroke, allowing for extensive variations in complexity and structure. Each Cursive alphabet interprets this constraint differently, demonstrating the diverse possibilities within the cursive framework.
The unifying rule throughout is that each letter must be drawn with a single unbroken line which must also connect it to the next letter.
Extracts from Alphabetical Playground.
Matrix and Neo-Matrix.
Matrix
Inspired by conventional dot matrix technologies, Matrix explores three distinct typographic systems that vary in linguistic fidelity. Instead of using traditional dots, each system’s characters are constructed from unique geometric components. While they draw from functional matrix-based typography, these designs prioritise the interactions between the individual subcomponents of letterforms and their adjacent characters. By also eliminating spacing between glyphs, emphasis shifts away from conventional legibility and towards the abstraction of intricate patterns.
Neo-Matrix
A development of the Matrix system, Neo-Matrix features a set of alphabetic forms built from geometric shapes. These units exceed the limits of the original matrix system. Where shapes overlap or merge, they generate to new configurations and geometric relationships. The points of connection between units are emphasised, becoming key visual and structural features of the type, giving visual cohesion to the overall design.
Joy is social, often shared, and has the power to shift mood, creativity, and connection in an instant.
It was with this spirit, @neue_miller@pentagramdesign introduced Nigel Cottier’s Alphabetical Playground project, reimagined here in the context of a greetings card.
Transforming type into ornamental, decorative elements, the project explores multiplicity through the interaction of print and letterforms, where mixed glyphs converge to produce a set of cards. The papers serve as the canvas.
In close collaboration with print specialists @identityprint layered metallic and fluorescent inks explore colour, pattern and craft.
The final pieces highlight the variation of inks over each unique coloured paper, celebrating play, experimentation and expressive typography.
We didn’t know exactly what we would get. The unpredictability and the moment of surprise when the results appeared completed the process. Working with @gfsmithpapers was a Joy!
Project Team:
@neue_miller@process.pattern@jensturrock
I Inverting
A set of three type systems defined by variable parameters. Each system incorporates alternating stylistic sets that produce spatial or contrast-based variations across character strings. Text is encrypted through these inversions, requiring readers to interpret glyphs as either positive or negative spaces, or through shifts in contrast. The simplicity of the geometric letterforms provides a rhythmic interchange of figure and ground patterns that offset reading and abstraction.
A. Alphanumeric
A set of alphabets created using alphanumeric code, the letters being formed from, informed by or represented by their corresponding number. Instilling this secondary input into the alphabet creates an interesting relationship between the numerical and alphabetical codes. Each alphabet treats this relationship differently, some using the numerical code to affect the alphabetical forms and some are reduced to representing the numerical value alone. These become a kind of psuedo-writing, an encoded patterning informed by and abstarctly expressing the language held within.
Published by @slanted_publishers and released in September, Alphabetical Playground is a book of alphabets all created from an array of systems/themes developed and outlined within in the book. Listed below, each outlined to explore established and new realms of graphic and alphabetical expression.
A Alphanumeric
B Bisect
C Cursive
D Dimensional
E Embedded Geometry
F Frameworks
G Gradated
H Horizontal
I Inverting
J Justified
K Kinetic
L Letters-within-Letters
M Matrix
N Neo-Matrix
O Oblique
P Phonetic
Q Quadrisect
R Re-Contextualised
S Shifted Pattern
T Tessellation
U Ultra
V Vertical
W woven
XYZ Mixed System
