FreshBump

From age four to 16 I lived under the iron-fisted tutelage of a clan of Kung Fu monks, studying without rest from sunup till sundown — except Thursdays, when Project Runway was on — in preparation for the day when their superhuman powers would be bestowed upon me and I would carry on their thousand-year legacy of justice, honor, and fashion-forward flare. Finally the time came, kneeling at the foot of the temple stairs, my head bowed, ready for enlightenment. After what felt like hours — but was actually like two minutes according to my iPhone — it began. “A choice awaits, my son. Drink from the red elixir and be blessed with the gift of flight, guarding the vault of heaven like the sword of god.

Drink from the blue elixir and become like the tiger, your raw strength and impossible speed tearing the armies of oppression limb from limb until peace reigns. Now proceed, faithful apprentice, to the inner sanctum of the temple. Embrace your destiny.” Long story short, it was really dark in there and I accidentally drank a half-finished can of Diet Fanta. “Dude, you drank the Fanta, didn’t you,” my master sighed as I walked back into the sunlight. “Alright then, forget about the power of flight or the shape-shifting tiger thing. You just learned Photoshop. Good luck, I guess.”

Circuit Bent Type 1

This is the very first piece I created in my current body of work, and the first piece in my Circuit Bent Type series. To this day, I work exclusively in reds and red-like tones, such as oranges and browns, and this piece helped establish that tradition. The hacked up cassette and electronics were created in 3D, and the typographical elements were all based on original typefaces.

Urban Cartography 1

After finishing Circuit Bent Type, I began work on Urban Cartography, my second major series. This was the first entry, and set the trends that the rest of the pieces would follow. The focus is a deconstructed urban environment in which everything from the streets to the buildings is composed of cubes and square tiles. I think the resulting image is surprisingly coherent considering how heavily segmented its elements are. The type treatments woven throughout add an additional layer of abstraction while at the same time blending into the three-dimensional structure of the environment itself.

Urban Cartography 2

This is the second piece in the Urban Cartography series. I wanted to push the abstraction a little further this time, so I arranged the elements into an Escher-like configuration of counter-intuitive geometry. The type treatment here was meant to function on a spatial level even more than a textual one.

Circuit Bent Type 2

This was the second piece in the Circuit Bent Type series, and the first application of Decoder, an abstract, sans-serif typeface I designed a few months prior. Each entry in the series involves a cassette somehow, so I focused on turning the tape into a flowing typographical element this time.

Pavement Loop 1

This is the first piece in ‘Pavement Loop,’ my most recent series. I wanted to contrast the open-ended sense of freedom associated with freeway travel with the artificial, rigid appearance of roads themselves. This piece in particular was my favorite, as I feel it says the most with the least effort. Again, the segments of the road are separated just slightly to add an additional layer of subtle surrealism in an otherwise fairly realistic image.

The Imprint 1

This is the first piece in ‘The Imprint,’ a series I created to explore the visual idea of colored stripes falling across the monochrome surfaces of broken down audio gear. I got the idea from those videos on YouTube of shapes that have been projected down hallways so they appear to float when viewed from the proper angle. What I found interesting, however, was deliberately looking at the scene from the wrong angle, as the patterns and forms created by the projection fascinate me.

The Emergence of Selves

My intention with this piece was to dig as deeply as I could into the seemingly simple geometry of my often-used audio cassette.

Poison

I created this piece of ‘experimental’ typography as the first in a series of 10 explorations. I originally wanted to use the red cable for the lettering itself, but continually found the results too heavy and awkward, so I created a simple heart shape with it instead. The letters, meant to look like shadows cast by hand-made paper cutouts, add an additional layer of playfulness.

More Info: www.alexvaranese.com