A while ago I saw an interesting post on instagram where someone interpreted elements of nature into letters thus being able to kind of “encode” a message into what looked like a field of flowers at first.
I was a big fan of that right off the start and began working on my own “natural” typeface which I dubbed Cloud Script. In short: it utilizes the upper arc of a painted cloud and applies distinct but cloudlike shapes to form a unique cloud shape which can be decoded into a word. One cloud equals one word.
Have a quick look at the decoding table:
The individual letters connect, kind of like cursive, with the goal of creating a beautiful cloud. Size and spacing of each letter has no bearing on the meaning of the word but only serves to make the cloud look better. In addition each cloud can be adorned with stars, smaller, non-descriptive clouds, and more to be made to look like a beautiful drawing rather than a message. Here’s an example:
(focus one the upper arc of the cloud, anything inside and outside of the cloud is just decoration)
Excuse me if you decoded it, it’s a bad word but it’s the only example I had at hand.
This little exercise in creating a new whimsical font was a refreshing change from designing things that were “optimal” or perfectly user-friendly, instead focusing purely on aesthetics and how beautiful one can make a cloud. It couldn’t be rushed or made more efficient without destroying the core idea and purpose of it. Instead one had to slow down, maybe redraw and iterate on one cloud a couple of times which could result in a writing speed of 0.1 words per minute.
Also I don’t think that anyone reads these blogposts so Fabry if you’re reading this send me something in cloudscript. Byye
