César Cid of CESS has assembled The Artphabet: 26 three-dimensional letters associated with artists. Creative Boom covered the project on 27 October. The studio’s page lets you explore the original collection.
The brief itself interests us: how many clues must survive for a visual language to remain recognisable? Remove the subject and material, contour, colour and movement take the lead. A letter becomes a small frame for that experiment. There’s less room than on a poster, but it soon becomes obvious when an idea depends entirely on a familiar image.
This is a series of individual works rather than a typeface for continuous text. It makes more sense to consider each object’s expression and the connections across the set. Try your own exercise: convey a familiar movement through one form without copying a particular artwork. Art history finally comes in handy before the argument in the comments starts.
