project three: typography as interface, take one...

After pondering my poem, I decided to experiment with the materiality of type (I also really wanted to play with the laser cutter here on campus). The notion of these experiments was to create type that had texture and weight and physical presence, and then place it in a digital environment and animate it—playing the two aspects against each other, physicality and digital-ness.

I experimented with thread and pins first:







Then I went through my collection of card stock and bought a huge piece of clear plexiglass and spent about four hours with the laser cutter:







These experiments with type were exhilarating and immensely enjoyable in their own right. I now own a pile of plastic helvetica letters, and there is something so awesome about that!

The next step in the project was to take these material attempts and somehow dump them into a digital environment, giving them motion and movement and to make it all compelling enough that a user would want to interact with it. A tall order indeed!