Gallery: A Polarizing New Font Made With Iron Filings and Magnets
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Designer Ariane Spanier crafted a dynamic and dimensional typeface using only refrigerator magnets purchased from a 99-cent store and acrylic paint mixed with iron filings.
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"I immediately felt the urge to create something dimensional, in contradiction to the flat screens of the computers, tablets or phones," says Spanier. "Something that almost climbs out of the screen towards you."
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Each letter was painted on a white plastic sheet smaller than a postage stamp and before the polarized pigment dried she placed a magnet underneath her petit canvas and watched the iron filaments get repulsed from the surface.
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The alphabet was commissioned by the makers of an app called Notegraphy, a tool that helps friends send notes featuring superior typography to each other.
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The only requirement Spanier had while creating Peak was that the characters had to fit a specific layout for the app—aside from that she could do whatever she felt drawn to.
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"Sometimes the magnet moved or something slipped and a letter was destroyed," says Spanier.
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Small disc magnets were too strong; larger magnets were weak and created boring patterns. "In the end it turned out that a simple fridge magnet from a 99-cent store was doing the best job in terms of height and size of the peaks," she says.
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Before setting up her own studio, Spanier learned the fine art of outré typography from Stefan Sagmeister, who rose to fame by making type from walls of bananas, exhaust tubing, and even scarring his own body to make interesting compositions.
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These unorthodox projects taught her a valuable lesson. "It is possible to mix emotional, playful, fun, and passionate design with great concepts."
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The other lesson she learned was a willingness to adapt to materials. "Any material or set up has its own behavior and interaction with its surroundings, and simply because of that, unexpected things happen," says Spanier.
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"I think the 'Z', the 'Q', the 'X' turned out really nice—actually these are ones that are probably the least appearing in the written notes."
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Spanier is a big fan of 3-D fonts, but not 3-D printers. "When it looks like its coming right out of the computer I probably don't see the point in making it, then photographing it, and putting it back into the machine as a 2-D image," she says.
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"I really like the different shades the bright paint and the darker filings inside produced," says Spanier. "They would keep their shape also once dried, but they change the color and just turn dark grey and the depth in them is lost."
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"We added a fantasy letter to the collections for users outside the romanic alphabets, so they also get a letter on top when typing something in Japanese or Arabic," says Spanier. "That one is a total free shape, some little mountains. That's why I like it—useless beauty."
