Type Project #1

After being inspired by Benja Harney and his cover of the October issue of Desktop magazine I decided to try my hand at creating 3D letters out of paper. Working as a self taught paper engineer in Sydney for the last six years, Benja has been involved in many amazing projects with paper including the Parklife poster, Kylie ‘Goddess Edition’ pop-up book and Birds of Tokyo Mastercard advertisement. To see more of Benja’s awesome creations visit Paperform.

Desktop Cover - October

Parklife festival poster

I had always loved the times we made basic 3D shapes in school; cubes, pyramids, cones, even the occasional dodecahedron. We were always provided with a flat piece of paper with a plan marked on it for cuts and folds.

So I decided to start by working out a plan for my letter. I started in Illustrator using the Bauer Bodoni M, thinking about where it would need to join, that the depth would all need to be the same. I thought I would use tape to stick all the pieces together. While putting all the pieces together I remembered that the plans for the cubes, etc had tabs that you would glue so it would fit together. I also realised that I had a few too many pieces to create the depth. As you can see the result here is a little bit shabby.

For my second trial I included the much needed tabs and tried to make as many pieces as possible attach to the M. This meant that only folding was needed instead of much cutting and sticky taping. This one is a lot cleaner and was much easier to put together. 

 

Ta Da! Im thinking if I made a few more they would be good hanging from a mobile or strung together like bunting to make a word.