Amandine Alessandra: News & Projects / Portfolio

“All is flux, nothing stays still, no man ever steps twice in the same river“, observed Heraclites.
This intelligent (because human) letterform allows a message to change from an instant to another, in an attempt to reflect on the fleeting quality of the moment.
It is flexible enough to keep the message relevant and up to date as its context changes, but also has the visual presence of a giant billboard.

Fitzrovia becoming Noho Square.

Fitzrovia then, now and to be.

This research aims at questionning/pointing out temporary hidden empty spaces,
caught in between what’s gone and what is to come.
This series of installation takes place in building sites in the changing urban landscape.
High wooden fences are hiding buildings being demolished or raised, leaving us with the feeling that a tower can appear or disappear in a night, as the whole process is hidden from us, while the result appears effortless in its (fake) instantaneity.
Tested visual solution: temporary hi-vi typographic installations

I have proved by actual trial that a letter, that takes an hour to write,
takes only about 3 minutes to read!
Lewis Carroll

The idea behind the experiment was to use a quote in another context to get it to say something
slightly different. Carroll’s words are used in a tautologic way: the words/letters, which are about
how long it takes to write a letter that is going to be read very fast, have taken literally
hours to write/weave across the gate, and (hopefully) won’t take more than 3 minutes
to be deciphered.

A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree. Spike Milligan
Experimentation using branches as a matrix.

The idiom up a gum tree, originated as like a possum up a gum tree, refers to being in trouble.

mapplethorpe ll

This is a second version of the Mapplethorpe alphabet, using the American photographer’s world as a mood board.
This is part of my research on how to get a letter to mean more than it reads.

A few more letters here.

http://designmarketo.com/booksetting-poster/

A book that is shut is just a block is now available for sale as an A1 poster on DesignMarketo!

Research on contextual lettering, or how to get a word to say more than it reads.
The typeface made of blue rubber gloves is called Marigold, the black leatherish one is Mapplethorpe.

The adaptation of Thomas Fuller’s phrase “A book that is shut is but a block” in the previous bookshelves installation was illustrated by my use of the book for their shape and colour, rather than content; as it is, Muller-Brockmann orange grid book is only interesting for its vermilion a4 shape.

Building up the letters also reminded me very much of typesetting, as every type made of colored books had to be blocked with white books, just as it is done in letterpress, where large areas of white space are created by wooden blocks called furniture.

A book that is shut is but a block.

I thought of this experiment as a tautology: shut books that are therefore just blocks used to talk about the fact that shut books are just blocks.