atypographic plotter drawings

Recently I gained access to a wonderful selection of pen plotters and have been coding up vector drawings to plot. I use these drawings to explore new (or often very old) ways of working with 2d vector graphics as well as abstract rule driven design. Unless otherwise noted these plots were made using python and the Vsketch library.

Atypographic Letters

Early in 2025 I was introduced to the concept of Atypography, an art movement codified by Svethe Grudi and Milenović Nikola in their Atypogrpahy Manual. In the Atypography Manifesto preluding the manual, Grudi and Nikola write that “Atypography is an art movement that graphically represents traditional writing systems in an unconventional way, creating an authentic design that remains readable while concealing text signs at first glance.” Conceptually and aesthetically I became enamored with this ability for text to be something that is initially just qualia, that is quiet, while simultaneously containing sharp specificity and semantic encoding.

Getting at the shape of text

Sometimes you want to see the “shape” of a story or composition of text. Common ways of doing this would be concrete poetry where the shape of the text on a page is as important as the text itself, or by summarizing the story’s main beats using a model like [insert story arc models here]. Both of these methods can only be used for spesfiic domains.

Sometimes you want to see the “shape” of a story or composition of text. Common ways of doing this would be concrete poetry where the shape of the text on a page is as important as the text itself, or by summarizing the story’s main beats using a model like [insert story arc models here]. Both of these methods can only be used for spesfiic domains.

Sometimes you want to see the “shape” of a story or composition of text. Common ways of doing this would be concrete poetry where the shape of the text on a page is as important as the text itself, or by summarizing the story’s main beats using a model like [insert story arc models here]. Both of these methods can only be used for spesfiic domains.

atypographic plotter drawings

Recently I gained access to a wonderful selection of pen plotters and have been coding up vector drawings to plot. I use these drawings to explore new (or often very old) ways of working with 2d vector graphics as well as abstract rule driven design. Unless otherwise noted these plots were made using python and the Vsketch library.

Atypographic Letters

Early in 2025 I was introduced to the concept of Atypography, an art movement codified by Svethe Grudi and Milenović Nikola in their Atypogrpahy Manual. In the Atypography Manifesto preluding the manual, Grudi and Nikola write that “Atypography is an art movement that graphically represents traditional writing systems in an unconventional way, creating an authentic design that remains readable while concealing text signs at first glance.” Conceptually and aesthetically I became enamored with this ability for text to be something that is initially just qualia, that is quiet, while simultaneously containing sharp specificity and semantic encoding.

Getting at the shape of text

Sometimes you want to see the “shape” of a story or composition of text. Common ways of doing this would be concrete poetry where the shape of the text on a page is as important as the text itself, or by summarizing the story’s main beats using a model like [insert story arc models here]. Both of these methods can only be used for spesfiic domains.

Sometimes you want to see the “shape” of a story or composition of text. Common ways of doing this would be concrete poetry where the shape of the text on a page is as important as the text itself, or by summarizing the story’s main beats using a model like [insert story arc models here]. Both of these methods can only be used for spesfiic domains.

Sometimes you want to see the “shape” of a story or composition of text. Common ways of doing this would be concrete poetry where the shape of the text on a page is as important as the text itself, or by summarizing the story’s main beats using a model like [insert story arc models here]. Both of these methods can only be used for spesfiic domains.

atypographic plotter drawings

Recently I gained access to a wonderful selection of pen plotters and have been coding up vector drawings to plot. I use these drawings to explore new (or often very old) ways of working with 2d vector graphics as well as abstract rule driven design. Unless otherwise noted these plots were made using python and the Vsketch library.

Atypographic Letters

Early in 2025 I was introduced to the concept of Atypography, an art movement codified by Svethe Grudi and Milenović Nikola in their Atypogrpahy Manual. In the Atypography Manifesto preluding the manual, Grudi and Nikola write that “Atypography is an art movement that graphically represents traditional writing systems in an unconventional way, creating an authentic design that remains readable while concealing text signs at first glance.” Conceptually and aesthetically I became enamored with this ability for text to be something that is initially just qualia, that is quiet, while simultaneously containing sharp specificity and semantic encoding.

Getting at the shape of text

Sometimes you want to see the “shape” of a story or composition of text. Common ways of doing this would be concrete poetry where the shape of the text on a page is as important as the text itself, or by summarizing the story’s main beats using a model like [insert story arc models here]. Both of these methods can only be used for the specific domains of poetry or literary analysis. Having been working with Atypography, I realized I could create a set of angles that correspond to characters. A text could be drawn as a single line and read with a protractor.

 

Here is Jorge Luis Borges’ “Borges and I,” written in angles:

Here is “Borges and I” written in angles surrounded by offset curves:

A consequence of representing text as angled line segments is that every phrase has a specific positional and angular displacement. When repeated, these phrases create periodic concentric patterns based on the phrase’s displacement. Below are some repeated phrases creating concentric patterns. The plotter I used for these drawings had controllable z-axis pressure so I exported G-code that increased pressure for capital letters.