title
Castor
Artist/Designer
Marianne Hoffmeister Castro & Patricio González (W Type Foundry)
Date
2020
type of writing system
Asemic
Based on
Beaver teeth marks
Castor is an experimental typeface consisting of 109 glyphs. These glyphs were developed by closely examining the toothmarks and patterns left by a beaver (Castor Canadensis) on a log found in Pennsylvania in 2020. The typeface was created by Patricio González at W Type Foundry as part of Marianne Hoffmeister’s ongoing research project, A Study of Beaverness. This project explores a beaver-centric imaginarium, examining animals as active agents and historical subjects through narratives that traverse geographical regions and periods. The process of crafting Castor began with manually tracing three sides of the log, followed by the conversion of these marks into distinct glyphs. A writing loop was then introduced to disrupt the linear nature of the typeface. This loop allows each typed letter to initiate a sequence of exchanges, resulting in a multitude of combinations and textures.
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This project was supported by the Language and Creation Center, Faculty of Architecure, Design and Construction at University of the Americas in Santiago, Chile. Special thanks to resident beaver (Castor Canadensis) of the Monongahela River, PA, Summer 2020.
Artwork courtesy of Marianne Hoffmeister Castro & Patricio González (W Type Foundry). All rights reserved.
abjad
abugida
acrophony
acrostic
alphabet
alphasyllabary
asemic writing
automatic writing
boustrophedon
character
character set
cipher
code
conscript
cryptography
encode
experimental
grapheme
glyph
hieroglyph
hieroglyphics
imaginarium
language
letter
letterform
linguistic
logosyllabary
logographic
logogram
nat scirpt
neography
optophonetic
phoneme
phonetic
pictograph
quasi
re-worlding
script
syllabary
syllable
symbol
speculative
torus
versimilitude
writing system
