Jing Zhang’s ongoing Lettering project is a typographical tour-de-force that takes each letter from the alphabet and transforms it into a complex, inhabitable structure. The ambitious undertaking, showcased recently on Behance, has yet to be complete, and we cannot imagine how long it must have taken just to get this far. Click for more.

While most typographers concern themselves with the spaces between their lines, Zhang visualizes each letter as an architectural entity, imagining the volumetric spaces within the figurative lines and curves. Her deep exploration of the alphabet has yielded fascinating structures, each one whimsically engineered into a contained system rigged with various mechanized functions and often operated by small human figures.

The structures are amusingly illogical, reminding us of the continuously ascending and descending Penrose stairs illustrated by M.C. Escher. The figures in Zhang’s illustrations are so preoccupied with their tasks at hand that they are oblivious to the disconnected nature of their settings. Lettering is not only an architectural meditation on the written word, but also a reminder to step back and examine the bigger picture.

by Kelly Chan

posted in Uncategorized

tagged Architecture, Art, Behance, font, graphic design, illustration, Jing Zhang, Lettering, typeface, Typography

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