Antipasto Handmade Typeface

 

Date: 2020

Inspiration:

    The only project on here from my time in design school, our assignment was to design a typeface with a physical object or group of them. Not so much stencilling the letter forms with something like a bunch of small rocks, but manipulating our chosen object(s) to work with the letter forms, letting them shape how the typeface comes to be.

    I was talking with a close friend at the time about not knowing what I would do for mine and he jokingly said 'use macaroni like you're in kindergarten' and the idea to use pasta immediately stuck. So many variations at types to choose from that I knew I was going to have a lot of fun with it.

How I did it:

    I printed out my initial letter forms onto paper so that I would maintain a consistent size as I sculpted them. I laid them out on a light table which is what creates the slight glow effect they have, it also made it much easier to mask them out in Photo shop. I ended up buying a lot of pasta for this assignment and it all was eaten over the coming years with friends and family.

What I'm Proud of:

    How consistent the letter forms are, they all go together so well. I really liked using the linguini for the straight edges and the inverse side of the macaroni to shape the curved edges. This project really brought forward my enjoyment of physical to digital in my graphic design practice.

To Improve Upon: 

     I do find some of the characters are weaker than others, they don't fit in perfectly with the entire typeface, letters like 'R' and 'U'. I wish I was able to find more types of pasta to use, even though I had a lot of choice already, it didn't feel like enough. Going forward it was important to me to make sure all elements harmonize, even if it means going back and doing the work over again.