title
Molecular TypographyLaboratory
Artist/Designer
Kobi Franco
Date
2019–23
type of writing system
Alphabet, Asemic
Based on
Hebrew alphabet
References
Molecular structures
Molecular Typography Laboratory is a typographic exploration that employs a fictional scientific method suggesting that the characters of the Hebrew alphabet possess a molecular structure. The project demonstrates how this speculative premise influences the Hebrew alphabet, its words, and the overall language. At its core lie six grid-based components referred to as “atoms,” which are regarded as the foundational building blocks for all the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Each atom is assigned a specific color and a Latin character (D, E, I, J, K, or V) for identification purposes. Every Hebrew letter is then rebuilt using combinations of two to ten atoms, effectively expressed as a chemical formula (e.g.: D4JKV). The project unfolds as a distinctive visual language, a spectacle of complex interchangeable relationships within each character that liberates the letters from their traditional linguistic roles to become open canvases for experimentation and interpretation.
Artwork courtesy of Kobi Franco. 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
