36 Days of Type
36 Days of Type is a creative challenge where designers reimagine all 26 letters and 10 numbers, pushing typographic boundaries while maintaining each character's fundamental recognizability.
Project Brief
I've always been drawn to typography, so I decided to try the 36 Days of Type challenge, where designers create custom letterforms for each letter and number 0-9.
Design Process
Quick Overview:
My goal was to push how far I could deconstruct each letter while keeping them legible. Basically, how weird can I make an 'A' before it stops reading like an 'A'? I focused on experimenting with the anatomy of each letterform, taking and adding elements to create something that looked familiar but unexpected.
Insights & Reflection
Traditional sketching made decision-making faster because I couldn't endlessly tweak like I would digitally. This helped me commit to bold ideas instead of over-refining safe ideas. I explored variations faster since there were less tools to get distracted by.
I created a limited color system to unify the drastically different letter designs. Since each letter was so abstract, this color palette unified them to appear more cohesive.
Simple-constructed letters like O, C, T, and 0 were the hardest to push creatively. They have fewer components to deconstruct, so I had to find subtler ways to make them interesting while keeping them recognizable. Complex letters like R and K had more anatomy to play with.