The power of Typography

Sarah Hyndman has been exploring how typography influences us for the past decade or so; setting up experiments and studies around its effect on our moods and senses and demonstrating how letterforms have powers far beyond mere legibility or decoration. 

Hyndman, a designer and founder of the Type Tasting enterprise, published the book The Type Taster: How fonts influence you back in 2015, and her interest in the subject hasn’t waned since. Now, with the help of an Arts Council grant, she’s created an innovative new ‘exhibition’ of sorts: but one which comes to you, in a small box.

Within each box is a series of three zines, as well as three small bags, each containing a different scent-giving object (one takes the form of dried plant matter; others are more like perfume sample sticks). Each scent corresponds to different exercises within the zine’s pages, which also include sensorial cues such as textures to feel, typographic trompe l’oeil and links to sound pieces including a collection of audio recordings from open-source NASA data, as well as ASMR cues and online kinetic type examples. 

It’s a smart take on the exhibition format in a post lockdown world: obviously, you can ‘wander’ round the exhibition from your own home (or wherever else you fancy taking the box); and it also makes good use of QR codes, taking them out of the realm of track and trace and into something rather more enjoyable. In addition, Elixir plays with the idea of the hybrid format: while it’s a gorgeous piece of print, the experience only becomes possible thanks to its online elements.

Elixir: Mood is available to buy at typetasting.com