Since doing research, I’ve knuckled down and, through using the various methods outlined in said research and with the inspiration of many others I’ve started really applying what I’ve learnt. With thoughts of how my Type Cube project could be influenced by these experiments:

The Type Cube:

I actually started with the Type Cube. Influenced by Colleen Ellis, I set up each of the final ‘viewing-zone’ letters in a 1000px x 1000px art board and subtracted the negative space…

I then ended up with more shapes and some that still looked like letters…

I went through each and erased any duplicates and went with letterforms I thought most potent. I wanted one from each colour really.

I attempted to create the classic typeface poster ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’, with just the words available (note the CMYK colour mode changing the colours for the printed format)…

I tried typing a bunch of words with these new letters…

After this I went BACK to the original art board collection and took the remaining negative space from these letters to see how many more letters were available this time (see picture below again for a clearer idea of what I mean. See the purple ‘F’ has another ‘F’ inside and the shape created by the ‘X’ creates what resembles an ‘N’. Kind of):

Anyway, these came out of round 2.

They spelt two words. ‘FUN’ and ‘MET’. Note how desperately that ‘M’ wants to be an ‘E’, but nope; it;s an ‘M’.

Taking them further, I decided to perform a quick 3D test and create some of these various letter in play dough or whatever the technical term for this fun clay is…

My favourite one is the spelling of ‘PUB’. Its cool to see them in 3D, and to my surprise, even after all the negative space exploitation; they still resemble strong letter forms. I took a video of the ‘T’ to show more clearly its full shape:

Its fun and cute. Its great to see these glyphs in 3D form, and it’s crazy to see how far a letter can be pushed and for the shape of it still be prevalent. In terms of commercial application, I thought a neat idea could be to then use the newly shaped letter forms as substitutes for the shapes in this puzzle…

Cube Blocks:

I attempted to create a typeface using wooden cubes, just because. They were all plain, with no paint; so I knew it was going to be tricky (sketches below):

A few of them are really quite nondescript and would be pretty much unrecognisable out of the context of this collection…

Fun little exercise, showing the true importance of horizontal strokes within letters. I actually tested these little magnets on the cubes to see if I could make them connect horizontally.

This also failed.

Connect Four:

I wanted to find existing grid systems in the real world, so I went shopping and picked up this Connect Four set in a charity shop for 99p.

There were enough pieces to fit inside, but not enough when I wanted to use the red ones to create letterforms.

So, I sourced another box of the game on ebay for £4 to get more chips. I started creating letterforms with this grid an hit a few problems on route. I was testing to see how much of the border I wanted to fill. I went full bleed eventually and also used the slight difference in coin colour.

Below, is the full alphabet…

It’s quite fun and a couple of the letters were tricky to work out. Like the ‘J’:

Starting from left to right, I decided on the far-right ‘J’ which I thought exploited the space within the grid most successfully.

I think I might book a studio to take some proper shots of this, then create a 2D version and maybe go from there. See what else comes to me.

Sink Type:

On a whim, I tried squirting some type into the sink.

Might work with a bit of practice and a scanner.

Continue reading about my practice experiments here: https://www.aalvkdotcom.com/post/experimental-practice-cont