Weaving Musings
 
This series of book objects plays with type as abstraction, exploring the boundary between letterforms as pattern versus their legibility, inviting you to contemplate thoughts on design and reading. Each is a four, six, or eight page folio, made with custom woven fabric, featuring lettering that is designed specifically for the thread count of the loom. The fabric is jacquard woven, then sewn with Japanese four-hole binding. The result is soft and tactile, with a plush fringe at the top and bottom edges.
 

The fonts used in these weavings are based on my earlier bitmap designs, which initiated the Emigre Fonts foundry, as a spin-off from Emigre Magazine, in 1985. Nearly 40 years later, this project has brought me full circle, back to the essence of bitmaps, employing them to weave text into textile.
By outlining and subtracting pixels, I came upon the illusion of woven forms, which inspired me to apply them to weaving technology, since weavings are essentially bitmaps, built from thread.
 

These monospaced letters fill their space entirely, both horizontally and vertically. When set without line spacing, their abstracted letterforms create dense patterns of text, connecting in both directions. Initially, I applied these woven letters onto pillows in four letter words like "NICE" and "WISH" which gave me the idea of the book format. To fit the square grid regimen of the book pages, I first limited the text to using just one, two, and four letter words. After the first book, I expanded this by adding three and five letter words, adjusting the fonts to fit the lettering at the 28 dpi resolution of the weaving threads. The square page format and monospaced font proportions both echo the square nature of the woven grid framework.
 

At first glance, some pages may read as line patterns, mazes, or diagrams of computer circuitry. But, be sure to take a closer look and discover the words within.