The “Library” is an ongoing visual research project and personal design archive, systematically collecting, documenting, processing, and cataloging diverse visual and linguistic materials. The library also includes ‘LOS’, an ever-expanding collection of shapes and symbols, thematically organized across 42 digital fonts.
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Every artistic approach to a specific subject or question is usually based on the act of collecting: one collects information, texts, books as well as imagery and visual materials in order to approach a subject, to understand it, to get hold of it. Collecting is the starting point of any deeper engagement with content, the basic structure with which one approaches a particular topic in order to work on it and find new perspectives on it.
The ‘Library of Shapes, Texts and Structures’ is an ongoing visual research project and a personal archive of graphic elements. The title is programmatically chosen because the “library” encompasses the ongoing collecting, noting, documenting, processing, ordering, cataloging, and archiving of very different visual and text-based materials.
The library consists of a total of three sections: the “Shapes” section contains numerous forms and symbols, from abstract-geometric to figurative-illustrative to organic-distorted. However, this section also includes three extensive typefaces: Inventar Collection, Allgemein Grotesk and Retroskop. The “Structures” section contains a variety of serial structures, including analog and digital textures as well as photographic images of everyday typography and torn down posters. These visual collections are complemented by the “Texts” section. Arranged by date, it captures excerpts of everyday reading from newspapers, magazines, books, or even short messages on social media.
Since graduating from the California Institute of the Arts, I have regularly photographed vernacular typography, lettering, and graphics. This photographic practice is heavily inspired by my former mentor Ed Fella, who for many years has documented signs and lettering throughout the United States with his Polaroid camera. Beyond the vernacular, I look primarily for traces of faded lettering and lyrical remnants of torn posters as expressions of the poetry of everyday life. I process these photographs by transforming them into black and white images or bitmaps with greatly heightened contrasts. I also use tight cropping as a means of abstraction, highlighting interesting details or removing elements from their context. Some of these details may eventually be vectorized and then included in my collection of shapes and symbols. This specific collection appears as a series of fonts (called ‘LOS’), as font files have proven to be a perfect archival medium for simple or moderately complex vector graphics. Using font editing software as my primary digital tool, the shapes and symbols in this compilation can be digitally drawn or vectorized from scans of painted, drawn, or photographed shapes and objects. The linguistic counterpart to these purely visual collections is the so-called “text log”, a simple text file on my computer’s desktop, into which I constantly enter found text fragments or quotes as excerpts from my daily reading of news, essays and stories from various media. All entries are arranged chronologically and marked with the date of reading.
All of these eclectic practices of collecting, assembling, and remixing various materials eventually came together in the Library of Shapes, Texts and Structures.