The Process of a Material Typeface

Claire Powell

experimentation
Material 1: Q-tips

Step one:

We were supposed to choose three objects, not too bendy, to make letters from. N-O-P if they were lowercase. My first choice was Qtips: easily accessible and not just incredibly easy to work with. They ended up being a little too easy, though.

Material 2: Chips
Chips were actually my first choice, from the beginning. I had all these creative ideas for chips. But they are so very different from bag to bag that it ended up being incredibly frustrating to work with, and I gave up on them.

Plus, if were being honest, I kept eating my typography.

Material 3: X-acto Blades

These are so much fun to work with that I ended up choosing them, ultimately. They interlock so interestingly, theyre inherently dangerous, and they reflect light in a really interesting way.

I tried a lot of different ways: flat, as you can see on the right; interlocked, at the top on this page; and using the handle as part of a letter, on the bottom.

Refinement

Step two:

This meant a lot a lot of looking at X-Acto blades and trying to decide what went together best. I also decided on my word: Ouch. It seemed apropos.

Step three:

Final

Fixing my refinements in such a way that the context and word made sense together was the main focus of this stage. I ended up using paper to mimic blood a literal ouch!

*No pieces of paper were harmed in the making of this booklet.