Archive of Menial Things

Nu Zając

Keywords: Typography, Typographic memory

Internship: BlazeType
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Archive of Menial Things is a typographic practice intent on archiving daily, mundane conversations. Nu explores the textual record as a selective tool of remembering using three basic tools; letters, lines, and ornaments.

Letters form the crux of the archive, they are the tool of denoting information. Lines are the tool of denoting relation, directing the text towards structure. Ornaments are the metaphorical tool of denoting imprecision, directing the text towards whimsy and looseness.

A Visual Dictionary of Conversations is a publication within that practice, archiving conversations collected during four casual events and organising extracts as sixteen different things across sixteen spreads. Extending it are two stones. One fully carved stone, organising the conversation as monument, and a piece of lettering on another that will be chipped away at over time, organising the conversation as a practice.

Spread of a book. From keywords used in sentences, lines trace etymologies back to their root languages, resulting in a tangly, messy layout.
Spread of book. Sentences are arranged in spiral-shapes, responses to a sentence emerging from its respective spiral.
Spread of book. Syntax trees, diagram-like structures are arranged loosely in a way resembling a map of constellations, trees intersecting, aligning, and following paths rather than the logical structure they were made for.
Closeup on a stone-carving, letters with a 3-dimensional, v-shaped cut, spelling 'praise'.
An image of bézier points of the a-e ligature, greek characters spelling out 'programma', bézier points on the sinogram meaning 'tea', and a side-by-side comparison of the resulting italic font with handwriting.
Precise working drawing for numerals, showing some numerals outlined, others filled in black.
Scan of a precise working drawing, showing an italic sans-serif drawn three ways with subtle differences.