Alessandro Segalini

The task challenges students to arrange the letters of the alphabet in three main morphologic groups: letters based on the square, on the circle, and on the triangle — direct letterwise similarities, and more complex similarities pertaining to immersive reading. The various characters have features in common, and the relationships that these create can be diagrammed by drawing amoebas. Because information comes from contrast, and because a text typeface is a little machine that is supposed to facilitate reading, the exercise goal if to generate an awareness of what could constitute a formal analysis of alphabetic structures that needs to be considered in designing a text face.

Material: Cutout paper, glue.

Credit: “Modules + Similars” diagram by Hrant Papazian.