For his series Evolution of Type, the artist and graphic designer Andreas Scheiger creates living, breathing fonts; his ABC’s might be dissected like a human limb, revealing boney spines and straining ligaments. With surgical precision, the flesh of his curvy S is pulled back in a manner that is both grotesque and sensuous. In this strange marriage of art, language, and science, the artist is inspired in part by Victorian sentiments and the emergence of Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species and the theory of evolution, which spurred medical debate and disillusioned many a spiritualist.
Scheiger’s work is profoundly influenced by seminal Vicorian text The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering, written by Frederic W. Goudy, the designer behind famous typefaces like Copperplate Gothic and Goudy Old Style. Schneiger imagines the literal manifestations of Goudy’s analogies, which compared lettering to animated organisms; like creatures extinct and in existence, language too has a history, bringing with it the ability to record and preserve human thoughts and discoveries.
Within Schneiger’s imaginative font, E’s are skinned to reveal a muscular-skeletal system; deeper still, is a network of red and blue veins and capillaries that transport oxygen to some unknown organ. Much like actual bodies, these letters are capable of deterioration and decay; a G appears lifeless, mounted like dinosaur bones. Similarly, a P gets trapped and preserved in amber, and a prehistoric J is fossilized in stone. The terms “the life of language” or “the body of text” become spell-binding realities in this whimsical and thoughtful series. Take a look. (via KoiKoiKoi)