 for a lot of experimentation. You know, we have examples of stencil art of various sorts that goes back like 35 millennia. You know, we have hand stencils, prehistoric hand stencils. We have stencil art depicting ancient machines from a galaxy far, far away. And you know, it really, it can be applied in so many different ways. This is a dimensional stencil piece that I did last year. And it's kind of, I like this because it's a little bit of a microcosm of design thinking and it represents what's fascinating about stencils, I think, in that the medium informs the aesthetic. I'm carving this directly into the pages of a book, right? And so obviously the counters are gonna fall out unless I leave bridges. And so I turn, you know, a Swashie stencil, or excuse me, a Swashie script into a stencil to fit the medium. And so you have, you know, the rationale behind stencil type in this kind of experimental form. It's like a, you begin with a very utilitarian outlook with stencils, you know, going hundreds of years back. It's kind of an answer to the question of how to reproduce letter forms quickly and easily and accurately. You have them on, you know, vehicle fleets. This is from Kirby Stafford, a sign painter from Kentucky. You know, the Phoenix Motor Speedway. Some interesting forms in here, even as simplistic as it is, like the W, the R and extra bridges. You see it often used in Asia to mark taxi fleets. This is a photo from Ben Mitchell with some Thai and some Latin, you know, that was used to represent a taxi co-op. This one, I snapped actually in Uptown just east of here. And so I had to include it, you know, being local. You can see the vinyl lettering has shrunken and fallen off. And if you look really closely, that you can see that the C is beginning to shrink a little as well. It might be falling off pretty soon. These are from, you know, Dins stencils. It's like a veritable celebration of functionality. You know, these are from a stencil catalog from the 1930s. I obscured a couple of Swashikas actually, but I mean, you know, you have stencil black letters. So yes, please, I'm going to include this anyway. More Dins stencils. Yeah, not my toes. These are some stencils from the French, the French Metro. Again, it's like, you know, you have signage, you're punching forms out of metal. And so it's a very utilitarian mindset that brings you to this particular conclusion. But you know, you can still make it pretty interesting, you know, unusual forms. This one, I really love the vernacular. In this one, I'm really crushing on that one. Sorry, you can boo, that was awful. That was really awful. I'm sorry, I won't do that again. But yeah, I mean just the forms, the vernacular there that really shows up, the breaks make it very visually interesting. And the forms are just like this odd contrast of the super heavy and then the absences of space within the letter form. You get a lot of interesting signage with stencils when you're mixing strips. One major benefit to this is that the person who is creating the sign doesn't have to read or write all of these scripts. You know, you can just spray it on. So you have some tamil, some Chinese Latin. This one, I really like this one, snapped by John Pinhorn. You have this really chubby, chubby tamil. I really like the weight in here. And the textural quality of the forms, you know, it's paired with a very, kind of a condensed tamil and then some Latin in there. Thanks John for the image. Another one, this one was snapped by Shiva on a train. I really liked this one because it really breaks up the forms to a point where, you know, you can't really read them very well, particularly the Hindi. I really like also the number of bridges. You see a lot of bridges in the O, you know, the A, obviously no crossbar. It's kind of a textural thing. You can also see some camera movement in the photo, which means that we know that Shiva was following the rules and not using the toilet when the train was stopped. So yeah, good points there. Yeah, some more mixed scripts from John Pinhorn again. You know, again with a lot of bridges, making things, you know, virtually unreadable, but resulting in a very interesting textural quality with the forms, the number of bridges. The A, I really like the crossbar of the A here, the solution they worked it in there. I would be remiss not to include a Dwiggins stencil, right? I mean, no talkative kind of is complete without a mention of Dwiggins. This is his postmaster stencil. This is his modular stencil that, you know, can create the alphabet using a variety of, you know, little fractions of letter forms. Thanks for the image letter form archive. This is actually from the book by Dorothy Abbey on his illustrative stencils that is being republished later this year from the Princeton University Press. So I definitely recommend checking that out, mostly illustrations, but some type in here as well. Yeah, some more fun stencils with some tie that Ben Mitchell snapped here. Just really interesting forms. Interesting to see stencils used as a practical solution here. More tie. I really like the rounded forms and the various sizes. These are some stencils from Corey Holmes, and I thought I'd include them because his, a little quote that he had when he released these really kind of embodies, I think, what's attractive about and interesting about stencils to us. This is, you know, you can actually see these out in the Soda store. But it is, you know, the modular, you know, mirroring LED matrices. I'm gonna read his quote here. It's kind of humorous, but it really embodies it, and I quote, I really like the idea of introducing stencils into the market just at the point that they have absolutely no use or meaning anymore. So it's like, there's a sense in which stencils are ephemeral at this point. You know, there's something of an acrysm. But, you know, they may be anachronistic, but we don't abandon them because there's value in experimentation to be found there. So these have been primarily function-based, but then, you know, sometimes you can prioritize form and use the opportunity that this affords to explore. You know, you can take generally, this is densiletta from Delphans, you can take generally traditional forms and then take advantage of, you know, the unusual vertical rhythm to, you know, with the layers, the diagonal bridges. This one's from Shiva as well. Enemy, it's kind of a militaristic style, but obviously it abstracts it a little bit. You know, really chunky forms. Does something fun with what could be a fairly traditional vibe. This one, of course, you know, a revival of the berry typefaces that are like a really early example of people doing a lot of really crazy stuff with stencils that come from a very, very functional background. But then, you know, you can obviously turn it into something that's really beautifully complex. This is from our type. I really like this pair of stencils from Gareth Hague. This one, I really like the heavy ball terminals. You know, it's kind of a modular system here that you can take these very simple shapes that combine to make the entire alphabet, really. And, you know, obviously punctuation and everything, but it really abstracts it. Gareth has quite a talent for abstracting things and making, you know, really weird forms that still make sense. And I really like that about this. Of course, this is what I set the title slide in. Beautiful type. And then his as yet unreleased anodyne, which, again, it's a fairly traditional form, but he takes the idea of removing parts of the basic letter form and plays with it, you know, creating some very unusual bridges, odd angles, things that just break up the pattern a little bit and make it, well, it's a fairly traditional form if you step back. If you look a little closely, it's very intriguing and there's a lot to look at there. This one I got from the Lublin archive. Here it's a shot of a candy box. This is actually not a true stencil style. You can see the closed loop in the B, but it was so finessed and beautiful I couldn't exclude it here. Just lovely stencil style work inspired by stencils, but not a literal stencil by Charles Dean for a candy box. This one, I really love the abstraction that you can get into when you're breaking up the Latin forms like this. This says orange, it's black just to trick you. I should have colored it orange, but this is from Mika Melvis and he does some great work and he was playing with the forms here to the point where if you actually remove some of the forms, it becomes like, a lot of people wouldn't recognize these as letter forms, as Latin forms. I mean, most of the people in this room probably will, but it's just, you know, the abstraction that you can get into really playing up the differences and removing parts of the form to create really interesting visual patterns. This one, I really enjoy the experimental work of Bart Bollebrandt. I don't know if you're familiar with his work or not, but he let me use these images as long as I made it clear that they were still works in progress. Yeah, there are a couple of one word experiments where he's actually building the forms around the breaks as opposed to, you know, taking a standard form and then removing part. You know, it's really an unconventional approach. I really like the approach on the breathe there on the left. This one, this one I really love. This is pretty brilliant, I think. This is from Ruegan Johnson. It's also an in progress typeface, very limited carousel set as of yet. It was inspired by Nebulo's Landi Echo. So the form within a form, you know, that's kind of blocking out portions of the other form. And Landi Echo is actually not a stencil form, but of course the extrapolation of this concept turns it into a very, very fragmented form. You're really just hinting at the Latin form at this point, just these fragments, splinters almost. And I'm excited to see where this goes. I think there's a lot of potential here that's just really beautiful and very, I don't know, kind of subtly evokes language. More from Bart, I really like this one. It's kind of like, I don't know if you've noticed, it's basically a type cooker experiment. It's like the trifecta of interesting quirks. You have a backslant, a stencil, and reverse weight. And he actually turned it into real stencils, you can see he stenciled it into sand and some other things. It was meant to evoke landscapes. It's an interesting experimental project. And I think, I don't think he has capitals for this yet. Thanks to Bart for letting me use this image. Another one from Bart, I really love this one. I think with some open type wizardry, this can make a really incredible typeface. Again, the trifecta of quirks. Just the connector is the various portions of the letter form that are so abstracted that a lot of people would not be able to read this. But it's really fascinating when you put it all together and it becomes readable. You step away and it's, I don't know, fascinating stuff. I'd love to see this expanded on in the future. Some more textural stuff. This is from Erin McLaughlin, a photo of some really fragmented Urdu. She snapped on the side of a bus. I really like this because, of course, I don't read Urdu, but it creates a very interesting visual pattern. It's the kind of thing where you can appreciate the aesthetic. And I think this would be difficult to read even for an Urdu speaker or reader. But it's just, I really like the textural quality. Again, the broken forms. What you see with kind of abstracting it unintentionally in this case. More, another photo from Ben Mitchell. This is some Burmese punched into metal. Obviously, this is, again, from a functional standpoint where you're actually punching it into the metal requires a stencil approach. But it's really kind of playing up the stencils and the patterns. Very visually interesting, even for those of us that don't read Burmese. This one, this one I added in at the last minute. My friend, Danielle Evans, did this just this week to promote a workshop she did. It reads hashtag WMC word play. Again, so I snuck this in at the last minute. And I thought this was really interesting because it's not actually stenciled, but you have the various layers of abstraction because you're working with an interesting medium. The stencil forms, omitting portions of the form, obviously it's very visually interesting. You have to look at it a couple of times to read it. And of course the colorful background, the diagonal. A lot of fun to be had there. And it's not actually stenciled, but just formed that way. Kind of shades of bifur maybe. And you thought layered fonts were just trending now, right? This is from 29, just beautiful stuff. But what I really love about this piece in particular is that it represents what stencil styles have become. They're no longer a functional thing. They're primarily for just the interest we can find in the stenciled forms, removing the Latin, portions of the Latin form or not in Latin's. And it's like you're abstracting, you're experimenting. And it really is word play. It's fun stuff. You can have so much fun with stencil forms. So I guess I just encourage everyone to embrace what's between the lines. Build around what's not there, build around what's implied, what's abstracted. And have fun. Thank you.