Tongue-twisting Typography

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 | By Angus Montgomery

Word games and type design are brought together for Text Gallery’s Imaginary Menagerie show, which launches in London this week.

Imaginary Menagerie (such a satisfying title to say out loud) sees 19 designers from around the world given an open brief to explore the more tongue-twisting elements of language through typography.

Some have gone for traditional tongue-twisters, such as Brian Webb’s exploration of Cross Crossing Cautiously and Hand & Letterpress/Mary Plunkett’s look at red and yellow.

More experimental works include Barnbrook Design’s visual reproduction of hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia (the fear of the number 666) and Jim Sutherland’s work Parastratiosphecomyia, which sees the Latin name for the soldier fly applied to an anti-insect light.

As well as English tongue-twisters, there are also submissions drawn from Italian, Spanish, Russian and other languages, such as Italian group Happycentro’s Latin-based palindrome Sator Square.

Text Gallery has also created a video of the designers trying (and only sometimes failing) to pronounce the titles of their own works out loud.

Imaginary Menagerie is at Text Gallery, London WC1 from 20 October-19 November

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