Craquelure
Typeface Design
2024
SIZE: 12 x 9 in.
BINDING: Folded
Craquelure is a type design project that began as a daily walking and journaling practice. During these walks, I started noticing shapes in the environment—cracks in the sidewalk, tree branches, shadows—that resembled letterforms. What began as casual observation turned into a focused process of collecting, sketching, and documenting naturally occurring typographic forms.
Over time, I built an archive of these found shapes and began digitizing them into a typeface. The result is Craquelure, a speculative typeface made entirely from fractured, irregular forms sourced from the built and natural environment. The name references the fine cracking that occurs in aged paintings; a nod to both the texture of the forms and the act of close looking.
The letterforms are intentionally inconsistent and imperfect. They retain the unevenness and ambiguity of their origins, resisting the standardization typical of traditional type design. Each glyph in Craquelure functions as both a letter and a trace of a specific place or moment in time. The typeface doesn’t aim for legibility in a conventional sense, but instead becomes a record of noticing.