36 daysof type2023
36 Days of Type is a project that invites designers to express their unique interpretation of the letters and numbers of the Latin alphabet. In 2023, I participated for the second time. At this point I was just learning to use Processing. As I remembered from the first time I joined in 2022: 36 Days of Type is one of the most fun and efficient ways to learn new things. It takes many hours in a short period of time, but the amount of skill you gain is amazing, especially when you're new to something.
Specs
The plan was to create a consistent series of letters, all following the same core principle and color scheme. I worked on this technique for quite a while. The idea came from building random constructions — every layer is built randomly on top of the previous one. So every time you run it, it's different. By plotting an image of a letter onto the construction, I added maximum heights. So eventually, as the city grows, you start to see the shape of a letter.
For every building, I added a different technique to make the letter stand out from the others. Whether it was physics or a growing mesh, I figured this approach would keep things interesting enough for me to make it to the end.
Then I got bored. Now there was a decision to make: do I continue day after day being bored—or worse, do I break my consistent plan? With pain in every muscle of my brain, I let go of the plan. Context over consistency. Suddenly, a whole new world opened up. Best decision I could’ve made.
I pushed myself to come up with a new idea every day, learning even faster and ending up in places I wouldn’t have expected. At this moment, I’m really embracing tools — learning how to build them cleaner, more scalable, and more reusable (which comes in handy when you need to make something new every day). What a fun project this ended up to be. Here you’ll find a collection and overview of all my tools and results.