Automatically Arranged Alphabets (2015)

Automatically Arranged Alphabets (2015)
Experimental Jetset
Staple-stitched “zine” with screenprinted silver cover. H180 x W160 mm. 24 pages. Acquired from the Newbridge Project, 18 September 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

On their website, the studio posted an automated gif of this typographic experiment involving software-generated compositions (archived here).

Beautiful typography meets beautiful calligraphy at the other end of the spectrum of technique in the Books On Books Collection with Francesca Lohmann’s later calligraphic work An Accumulated Alphabet (2017).

Experimental Jetset (a phrase excerpted from the title of a 1994 Sonic Youth album) is an Amsterdam-based design collective founded by Danny van den Dungen, Marieke Stolk and Erwin Brinker in 1997. New York’s MoMA, clearly a fan of the studio’s work, holds a significant collection of their work. From the studio’s description of it here, their participation in MoMA’s 2012 exhibition Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language clearly influenced Automatically Arranged Alphabets, whose series of automated sketches were made in 2014-15.

Further Reading

“Abecedaries I (in progress)“. Books On Books Collection.

“Francesca Lohmann“. 25 June 2021. Books On Books Collection.

Experimental Jetset. 2017. Statement and Counter-Statement: Notes on Experimental Jetset. Volume 1. Second ed. Arnhem, NL: Roma Publications.

Experimental Jetset. 2021. Superstructures: (Notes on Experimental Jetset. Volume 2. Amsterdam, NL: Roma Publications.

Hoptman, Laura, et al. 2012. Ecstatic Alphabets/ Heaps of Language. New York NY: Museum of Modern Art New York.