Slab Cipher

Lumen & Logic

A block of ultra-bold asemic display type set solid. The frame is cut into rows of unequal height and each row into glyph-width cells on a single visible module; every cell is inked as a hard slab with a share of its corners turned to full quarter-rounds, and because the bodies are all painted before anything is cut away, neighbouring glyphs fuse into one unbroken mass of ink. A second pass punches the ground colour back through it: interior counters — squares, discs, slots, pill bars, triangles, stepped notches and pointed leaf-lenses — and edge bites that eat into the silhouette and turn slabs into hooks, wedges and diamonds. Each glyph draws its counters from one of eleven archetypes defined in a unit square and mapped through one of the eight symmetries of that square, so the same few shapes recur at every orientation and the block reads as a typeface rather than as noise. Every size is a whole number of modules, a seeded share of the seams between glyphs and between rows stays open as a one-module channel, and a fine print grain dusts both flats. Two colours, no outlines, no gradients.

Medium

Generative algorithm, archival pigment print

Dimensions

60 × 90 cm