Parts Of A Character

Parts Of A Character is your gateway to all creations submitted to typeisart.com

Says Susanne Cerha, founder: I never thought the poster I made at School of Visual Arts in New York in 1997 would set in motion a flurry of creativity that would evolve into the online interactive art project Type Is Art, and warrant its own print shop. That was not my intention at all. I just made a poster. Which inspired a programmer. And then our public art project Type Is Art was borne online. Suddenly strangers from all over the world found their way to it, and submitted creations. More in detail, the story goes like this;

My typography teacher was Michael Ian Kaye. He is a sharp critic and an absolute perfectionist, always bringing out his fearsome ruler to measure the accuracy of his students’ work. Mr. Kaye assigned a poster project to the class. The task at hand was to re-design a well known, at least to typography students, educational poster, explaining the various parts that makes up the characters of the alphabet. Typically, these look as inspirational as the medical prescription with small arrows pointing to various letter parts.

I instantly knew what mine would look like. The picture just appeared perfectly clear in my head. After class I went straight home and designed it. Just like that, and it was done.

It takes something to silence Mr. Kaye. The following week in class, Mr. Kaye immediately singled it out amongst all other works on the wall. Then he stood still and eyed it up and down. He didn’t have a single word to say about it.

My poster fulfilled several criteria beyond its purpose of being educational. Primarily, it looked so different from any other treatment of this assignment – even outside of the classroom. Yet it seemed like the most direct and obvious solution. My teacher couldn’t believe he hadn’t come up with the idea himself. The concept, simplicity and execution simply blew his mind.

It has two components; the first is a so called visual hook. It triggers your curiosity and draws you in to inspect the poster closer. In this case, the hook is a balanced arrangement of odd yet recognizable shapes, together comprising a mysterious symbol. The second component is the ‘key’ at the bottom of the poster. It explains the shapes that the hook is made up of. That key happens to also be the key to many of the parts of the characters in the alphabet. Very simple.

For the next four years, the poster lay dormant as a digital file on a disc in my drawer. In 2001, when my husband Terje Vist and I started Silo Design Inc. , we decided to have the poster silk screened on archival stock in a small quantity. The idea was to sell it at the DUMBO art festival in New York, and to give them away as promotional gifts for our company.

One person who received such a gift was Jose Rodriguez, an old friend and a master flash programmer running his own business in Buffalo. He was so inspired by it, that he asked for my permission to build an interactive game, directly based on the poster. His 4-year old son Julian named the game Type Is Art. As the game developed, it became an online public interactive art experiment.

At typeisart.com, visitors use the components of the key to create their own visual hooks. From 2001 and on, to our amazement, the creations steadily ticks in. This type of play with shapes seemes to hold a tremendous allure to the public. Perhaps it provides a typographic release of sorts? A chance to vent visually? Brain exercise? The creations are incredibly imaginative, laborious and diverse. They seemed to demand their own space in the world.

In 2015, over 15000 creations were logged.