This work I shared with my roommate Jenny, a PhD student in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, who has a background in graphic design and digital media. I presented both the GCD page and the process of constructing the typeface in a 3D environment. She engaged with the project by observing the letterforms, manipulating the models within the interface, and attempting to compose text using the typeface.
Her interaction revealed several important limitations in the legibility of the system. While she was able to recognise certain letters quickly—particularly those from her own name—she struggled to identify others, such as “z”, which appear less frequently in everyday writing. This difficulty was further intensified by the fact that the typeface is based on my own subjective handwriting, which differs from her habitual forms of writing. Her reading process was therefore not only influenced by the spatial transformation of the letters, but also by personal writing conventions and familiarity.
In response to the second version of the typeface (x0y0z150), she described the letterforms as resembling Leonardo da Vinci’s mirror writing, suggesting that they functioned more like an encoded or encrypted system rather than a readable script. This interpretation indicates that beyond a certain threshold of transformation, the typeface begins to shift from communication toward obfuscation.
For the third version (x30y60z150), she found the letterforms almost impossible to recognise as conventional letters. Instead, she suggested that they could be understood as a different kind of writing system altogether, referencing Tezzo Suzuki’s typeface Mess, which operates within the framework of asemic writing. This raises a more fundamental question: whether legibility is a necessary condition for typography, or whether meaning can emerge through other forms of visual engagement, even in the absence of linguistic clarity.
Based on this feedback, several directions for further development emerge.
Firstly, the typeface needs to be refined as a more complete and usable system. At its current stage, it lacks essential components such as numbers and symbols. While individual letters function reasonably well in isolation, their behaviour becomes inconsistent when combined into words or sentences, resulting in awkward continuity. Further development will therefore focus on improving the coherence of the system at the level of composition, rather than treating each letter as a separate visual object.
Secondly, the project could be extended toward asemic writing, where legibility is no longer the primary goal. Jenny’s interpretation suggests that the typeface already operates at the boundary between readable text and abstract form. This opens up a direction similar to Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky, in which thousands of meticulously crafted pseudo-characters create the appearance of a readable system while remaining fundamentally unreadable. In this context, the typeface could be repositioned not as a tool for communication, but as a structure that both invites and resists reading.
Finally, for the less legible versions of the typeface, a rule-based system could be introduced, similar to Morse code, where meaning is not immediately visible but must be learned. This would shift the project from passive viewing toward an active process of decoding, establishing a new relationship between user, system, and meaning.