Exercise: Experimental typography

Below is an extract from Jules Verne’s 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea. Using a single typeface of your choice, lay out the text in as inventive a way as possible. Experiment with the letters and words, using the typographic principles you researched in earlier exercises to significantly alter the arrangement of the text, its rhythm and readability.
Think about design group Tomato’s definition of typography – ‘Sound as form’ – and how
this concept might apply to your own work. Use the content of the text to inspire visual
ideas. How might you experiment with the type to communicate something of the essence
of the descriptive content? Think about how the designers you researched in the previous
section, e.g. David Carson and El Lissitsky, would approach the text – or artists like Marinetti
and Schwitters.
It is important that you play with the text, with individual letters and words. How experimental
can you be in making expressive typographic designs? Can you reveal something of the
character and nature of the letterform by experimenting with scale and orientation, so a
simple unassuming letter becomes a monumental, almost sculptural form?
Read the text through once before starting to manipulate the type. Make several designed
versions of this passage, or parts of it, spanning several pages if need be. This text can be
downloaded online.

Первое, что мне захотелось сделать – это сложить буквы в форму того неведомого чудовища, которого наблюдали морякию

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