“They Hate Us For Our Freedom” by Claire Fontaine; via http://www.artistaday.com.

Claire Fontaine, a self-proclaimed “ready-made artist,” exemplifies identity produced by contemporary capitalism in almost all of her work. I was inspired by a particular piece by Fontaine for my alphabet design, titled They Hate Us For Our Freedom. This piece features a wall of text made with the burnt remains of lit matches. They Hate Us For Our Freedom  is a seminal sentence of George Bush’s speech after September 11, and depicts the United States’ ideological distance with the eastern world. I am intrigued by Fontaine’s creativity in her interpretation of political events that have had extreme impact on our world. In all that Fontaine creates, she focuses on transcending personal reflection upon those who observe her artwork, and enables people like myself to gain knowledge on monumental events that have shaped our nation and world as a whole.

Like Fontaine’s They Hate Us For Our Freedom, my letters will be sans-serif. This simple font design will allow the materials in use to speak for themselves. Every letter should have the same dimensions, as well.

My design will be materials-based, as I will be aligning match sticks to form letters. I plan to leave some matches unlit, others partially, and some charred to add dimension to each letter. I will be using Adobe Photoshop to remove the background color of each letter to remove the colored background, and isolate and resize each letter so they remain uniform. The flatbed scanner will allow each letter to maintain its detail and texture in a high-quality image.

A close-up of the matches, prior to being lit; via http://www.camstl.org.