Type Project

Microscopic Typography

Earlier in the year did a project on Type, I began to look into the idea of viewing type under a microscope which led me to think of what type would look like as a organism under a microscope. I created the image above, exploring organisms and the way they could form a letter.

After playing around with this I started thinking about the way we view things and the possibility of viewing type under a microscope. I wanted to investigate what effects typefaces, paper stocks, and size of the font had on the way it was read and viewed. I started with the words "Look Closer", but this didn't seem strong enough and didn't have much of an impact. I then looked into facts about microscopes and found one that said "researchers used microscopes in 2013 to demonstrate how life could have started". This led me to think about the origin of life. I then thought about The Bible and how the book of Genesis covers the origin of life. It was then I found the word I would put under the microscope. Genesis [1:1], which line in The Bible is "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth."

I thought there was a certain irony to having this word under a microscope, representing the battle of science and religion. It was quite powerful.

I began to play with different fonts and paper stocks to see what looked the most legible. After a variation of experiments I finally settled on one that was easy to read and had impact. It was interesting viewing printed type under the microscope, the tiny dots that make up a word can be viewed and look like organisms coming together to form a word.

The work went down really well in my crit and received a good response. The only comments on improvement were trying the type out on bible paper, I agree this could look interesting, but there might be more of a bleed.

Overall I really enjoyed this project, type is something I am interested in and would like to experiment with more. I kept a journal throughout documenting my visual experiments and thought processes, this helped me to connect my ideas together.