Design as Enchantment, Enchantment as Design
Zixuan Zhang
In my thesis research, I examined how tools, artifacts, symbols, language, rituals, and storytelling serve in the process of communicating beliefs and providing enchantment.
I focused on the confrontation between old beliefs and modern civilization, as well as new possibilities for re-enchantment in the contemporary context. By borrowing methodologies from old beliefs, I developed my own approach of using experimental typography as a portal to a re-enchantment world.
Brochure of Collective Imagination
I collected people’s imagined drawings of the mythical architecture, the Hanging Garden of Babylon, by sitting with them and reciting the story as they drew with pencil and paper that I provided.
Type Design: ToScry font
I designed a font for this project. The restrictions are: 1. Good for displaying in 3D space; 2. Resembles hand-written features—to express the emotions embedded in the nature of storytelling; 3. Looks like threads or curvy wires— to express the unraveling of a story with interconnected letters.
Thesis Book Cover Design
I use a variation of ToScry font for my thesis book cover.
3D Sketch and Text Architecture
I combine some features in participants’ drawings, like pillars, platforms, supporting structures, pavilions, etc. to create a 3D model. Then I replace all the lines in this model with text in the font ToScry. The texts are their descriptions of emotions they feel for their imagination.
Text Architecture (side)
This model is also a literature experiment - it can be considered as a poem, in a 3D space, with no fixed order of reading it.
Text Architecture (top)
Text Architecture (front)
