Alfabetical Creatures

With the 600 Characters project Grafisch Atelier Hilversum joined in on the 600th birthday of the city of Hilversum. We made a series of 40 posters, each poster using a grid of 5 by 3 squares. 5 times 3 is 15, and 40 times 40 is 600, you see.

All those characters were made with people from Hilversum. Visitors, school kids, students and passersby.

I designed one of these posters as well. I cut up photocopies of the letters A, B and C. These were proof prints made from the wood type collection of the printmaking studio. Some real beauties in there! Through cutting, moving things around and pasting them (a.k.a. ‘collage’) all kinds of figures showed up. Characters!

See, like so:

The Proloog organisation, coordinator of cultural education in Hilversum was excited about the project, about this and other posters. After some significant additional development that all turned into these lesson boxes (warning: Dutch! Linkedin!)

And that’s how the one project begets the next.