Action 10: Negative Spaces

This action started while I was reading a book on Type Exercises and came across a very interesting section about Form and Counter form of alphabets. Right after reading that, I just wanted to try to play with the negative spaces of the letterform myself.

To do so, I first made an illustrator file with the negative spaces of the English alphabets. But like my previous actions, I did not just want to complete this action on my laptop, so I decided to make a stencil out of it. This was the first time I was working with cardboard. (Another addition to my material exploration). After starting to cut out the letterforms with a cutter, I realized how tedious this was going to be. After spending hours cutting out each letter, I finally had my stencil ready.

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At first, I started writing the names of some of my cohort. The interaction of the negative and positive spaces brought out some interesting patterns.

Next I decided to use just the initials of the names of my cohort.  Sketching those down paper, it looked like ancient markings found in the pyramids of Egypt.

After doing this action, I realized how the negative spaces in letterforms balance out the positive spaces to create something meaningful. Since this was the first time I was experimenting with the negative spaces, I used English alphabets and used a font that was relatively simple. Moving on I would like to experiment with more complex fonts, languages and test how negative spaces could be used to encrypt messages?