36 Days of Type is a project that invites designers, illustrators and visual artists to express their unique interpretation of the letters and numbers of the Latin alphabet.
2023 was my first time participating. I chose gemstones as a theme for no particular reason. I suppose the geometric shapes (and their re-usability) appeal to my organised personality.
The design process was simple. I created the shapes in Illustrator and applied gradients using the gradient and mesh tools. The colours are inspired by real gemstones whose name starts with each respective letter of the alphabet. (There's one letter for which a quick Google search returned no existing gemstones. So I asked ChatGPT to create one. Can you guess which one it is?) For the numbers, I went with a black-and-white theme.
Then, I applied textures, shadows, and colour corrections to the gemstones in Photoshop. When arranged in a grid on a 'paper' background, they remind me of hard candy or colourful tokens from a boardgame. I feel like picking them up off the screen.
The type is set in Adobe Garamond Pro Bold. The serifs add a touch of old-world sophistication. The labels are fully capitalised to give them a blocky shape to match the stones.
