The typeface is the outcome of collecting specimens and sampling plant materials from nature, and using them as the fundaments of my design. These materials have been photographed individually, arranged digitally and converted to a typeface through a lengthy process of manipulation.

This design process is an interaction with nature. It is the ecosystem made cultural, an aesthetic rendered from the fertile British landscape; the heath, the fen, the meadow and the modest English back-garden. The practice of collecting and making specimens is removed from it’s typically scientific context and put to task for design purposes, using the chaos and complexity of the environment to produce work that hints at the sophistication and balance in natural order.

In compiling this typeface, I am looking for some sort of balance- a consistency of form, weight and composition between characters, a parity between the upper and lowercase, and legibility despite its complexity- but ultimately the plant materials define the outcome.

I have taken specimens from locations visited in England since undertaking this project at the end of September 2009. The current result is a starting point for continuing this project in other parts of the UK, as well as abroad. The work is shaped by a European climate and the cool English latitude, and this typeface preserves something inherent in the landscape.

The work displayed here represents the beginning of a continual process, which will see the work change with the seasons and the surroundings. In it’s present format it is one of thousands of possible outcomes to the process, and is fundamentally linked to the shifting Autumn/Winter of 2009.

Nature has established its order on my design process.

 

Implementation of typeface for graphic design purposes, as a display face and in conjunction with other fonts.

Logo design for the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew.

Some font implementation tests. The 'Culpeper' logo is a hypothetical redesign for a herbalists currently operating in the UK.

Some other font implementation tests. Here I toyed with the Kew Gardens redesign for the first time.