I’ll always love a geometric typeface and the micromanagement of kerning. I’m also down for the challenges of hand lettering and illustrative type.

Back in 2019, one of my managers brought a friend to visit and lead a workshop in experimental type. Jeremiah Chiu’s project brief: Illustrate your own experimental alphabet, mapping your bespoke typeface back to a source of inspiration.

After sketching and discussing first impressions, we each went to work and isolated four distinct shapes. We used each figure to craft a complete alphabet.

The leaves of Monstera deliciosa were already on my mind. I referenced the plant’s stalks and stems to create the light strokes in my typeface. The plant’s fenestrations create a negative space in its leaves, and I referenced these “missing” pieces for the round shapes and heavy strokes.

Unfortunately, this might be the only project for which I’ve lost my original artwork. I have a few photos that I snapped after the workshop wrapped, but I haven’t seen the Illustrator files since then.

I remember feeling frustrated with the shapes I’d created as I rotated and reflected them into letterforms. The organic, unyielding nature of the shapes wasn’t as pleasing as I’d imagined. It turned out that I’d have preferred something geometric, more delicate, or glamorous.

But I value the follow through. In this case, done was better than perfect, and I enjoyed the creative challenge in simply carrying an idea through to completion.