I Don’t Exist, 2003
Whilst doing my Masters at Central St. Martin’s, I developed a font made from the negative spaces of Futura bold, uppercase. However, the letter ‘I’ didn’t work as it has no negative space. I didn’t want to scrap the whole project so I came up with a story about the letter ‘I’ who doesn’t fit in with all the other letters in the alphabet as there is no negative space. Feeling very alone and isolated, ‘I’ had an identity crisis. Just as ‘I’ was about to end it all by jumping off the nearest tall bookcase, ‘I’ saw this book lying open on a coffee table. ‘I’ was mesmerised by all the colours and shapes and wondered what it all meant. ‘I’ soon realised that wherever there was supposed to be the letter ‘I’, there was a gap… and realised that without the letter ‘I’ stories would cease to exist. ‘I’ do exist!
I made 2 books, both laser-cut and self-printed.
This book (the black book) is laser-cut and tells the story above. There is one sentence per page, first comes the laser-cut and then the next page shows the text, and so on. With the right light you get beautiful shadows dancing across the page.