Clearly we’re fans of printed goods at Anthology. So the Vista Sans Wood Type Project by Tricia Treacy and Ashley John Pigford struck a cord with us. In an effort to bring together archaic and modern technologies, the duo designed a process to create wooden type, like that used in traditional letterpress, from digital text. Using a CNC they built, they carved sets of letters from blocks of wood to spell ‘touch.’ In an effort to keep the process and material evident in the final work, Tricia and Ashley experimented with different varieties of wood and varied the grain direction, unlike traditional wood type which was made from the end grain of hardwood to minimize any of the characteristics of wood.
Once the sets of letters were complete, they distributed them to various artists. Then those artists took the type and interpreted in their own style to create a print as part of larger edition. The resulting prints are an amazing set — each artists approach is so varied. And seeing the process documented at the Vista Sans Wood Type Project site makes them all the more interesting. You can see the full set of prints or read more about the process there as well.
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They are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund a book documenting the project. They are very close with only 30 hours to go! The link: http://kck.st/XkfKZO