We as humans can interpret symbols from parts of everyday things, such as plants, buildings, horizons, trinkets–everything has a sort of shape. These shapes may form familiar, symbolic objects (such as the alphabet, numbers) and inspiration for letters and symbols can hide in plain sight.

For our first Typography I assignment, our professor challenged us to take pictures of any letterforms that we could distinguish in the environment. Our professor encouraged to find the whole alphabet, numbers, and even other punctuation and symbols. We could not capture pre-designed type (such as on signage or posters) and rather had to explore our interpretations of the natural and architectural environment around us. This project challenged me to visualize letterforms in alternative ways and reminded me of the countless ways each of the letters can be and have been composed (for example, there are many ways to write and recognize a capital ‘E,’ not just the way kindergarten writing books and common typefaces on computers show how they are written).

Through this project I was able to expand my understanding of the creation of symbols, and how lines and shapes relate to one another in order to create something recognizable in an otherwise unintended circumstance. When I first set out I think I went to the more obvious places (things that would immediately catch my eye as a certain letter), but as I continued to search I began to look at more specific forms that could form many different letters if I changed my perspective. I also began to look not at just the positive space, but also at the negative space that could possibly inspire letterforms, which caused many instances of “that could be an E, or better yet a very interesting W.”