36 Days of Type continues with the letters E through H. The composition of the H is my favourite in this batch of four. I’ve actually been composing, photographing, and processing these in batches of seven at a time. It takes a couple hours of work to do this but it’s more efficient to work this way than one at a time.

I cut a few new patterns to use starting with the H, and also began incorporating a series of hand-cut half-circles in shades of blue that have been languishing in a drawer for years. 

On Monday the latest edition of 36 Days of Type went live for the ninth year, and for the first time I am participating. I had planned way ahead to take part because I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to play and explore new ideas. 

I decided early on that I would not hand make everything and definitely not create finished paper-crafted pieces. It’s just too much to take on for a daily project. I decided to use my digital cutter to create many of the pattern layers, and I cut them each in more than one colour. The letter forms are hand-cut because I needed them to be perfect, and the digital cutter is far from perfect. It too often has sudden meltdowns that lead to mis-cut patterns and butchered paper. 

I compose each letter design using four or five layers with foam core spacers in between each, take a few photos, and then pull it apart to create the next letter. I’m working with six colours, and cycling through four of those colours as the top letter layers – red, violet, indigo, and bright blue. These are the first four of my upcoming 26 letters and 10 numbers.

In case you are wondering, the inner shapes of the A, B and D are floating there on tiny pieces of foam core. 

I was looking for a project to energize, challenge, and inspire me, and this is absolutely doing the job. It’s an incredible amount of work, even without hand-making everything, but so worth it.