Gestalt Session 01

July 2018

Gestalt! A Study of Communal Typography is the second entry in the ongoing Conversations in Design series of papers. This paper is centered around four workshops where designers work together to build a unique 26-character alphabet using only a limited set of supplied materials. All other choices remain up to the designers: the overall style, if its uppercase, lowercase, serif, sans serif, and even legibility is all their hands; the only restriction being the supplies.

The first session explores the principle of Gestalt known as Invariance, or “dynamic perception.” This concept states that our perception of a single object is dynamic wherein the object can be viewed from different angles, skewed, reshaped, and rendered in a different medium, yet the brain will still understand that it is viewing the same object.

The supplies for Session One included four colors of construction paper pre-cut into triangles, and glue. Designers also had the option to cut their own shapes out of the paper when they saw fit. Every three minutes, the alphabet worksheets were rotated around the table to ensure that each designer added something to every letter in the alphabet. A letter was deemed complete only when all designers unanimously decided to no longer add to it.

The team: (from left to right) Sara Douma, Jeanette Pidi, Mike Sulick (host), Samantha Roth, Kevin Greene, Beth Fileti, and Anthony Inciong. All session photography courtesy of Joe Piccirilli.