With Pine, I have designed a variable typeface inspired by the pine tree and the anatomy of its needles – where two needles typically form a bundle, and the points connecting them vary in shape and size. This simple, organic structure gives rise to a visual language, an alphabet not meant to represent nature, but one that emerges in dialogue with it.
Pine needles come in bundles, usually in twos, threes, or fives. In the species of pine that grows naturally in Norway, the needles grow in pairs on the branches.
The form and rhythm in how they grow together – and how they fall apart – have a certain visual and rhythmic quality that spark the development of the typeface.
Pine is a visual response to the organism of the tree. A voice for something that may not be read in the conventional sense, but perhaps sensed. This voice can be expressed.
It can be presented through a visualized language. A proposition.*
*In Wittgenstein’s early philosophy (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921), propositions are understood as logically structured statements that can be either true or false. He regarded them as pictures of reality; they are ways of representing or imagining how the world is. A proposition provides us with a mental image of a possible state of affairs, even if it is not one that actually exists. Language can thus function as a picture of the world, where propositions mirror a possible reality.
Each character in Pine carries a potential for meaning, but it’s only when these forms are combined into a system that they open up the possibility for a kind of visual communication. Even if a single sign doesn’t communicate clearly on its own, the combination of forms can suggest something – an abstract, yet expressive language. A language with structure and pattern might be read as a method of listening and responding – a language without grammar, but with form and rhythm that can generate a kind of resonance. This, of course, raises questions about the limits of recognition and resonance in this kind of visual communication: How long are we willing to stay with something we don’t fully understand – something we can’t quite grasp, but that still stirs a sense of echo or familiarity? What allows us to remain there?
The absence of a code draws our attention to the span – or maybe the gap – between sign and meaning. It is precisely in this space that something happens: a performative moment where uncertainty itself becomes part of the experience.
In this landscape, connections can arise to what is described as asemic writing – a writing without fixed semantic content. It can be understood as text not meant to be read in the usual sense, but rather sensed and interpreted visually. Asemic writing is about evoking a reaction.
By frustrating or provoking the viewer, it highlights the presence of a voice we cannot understand – one that demands a shift in perspective in order to even begin to try. As Peter Schwenger describes in Asemic: The Art of Writing, it is a form of writing that moves in the borderland between text and image – where meaning emerges in the encounter with the viewer. This kind of writing can evoke associations, emotions, or insights without offering clear answers – and precisely through this withholding, it opens a space for the reader’s own projections and interpretations.
The typeface is presented through a specimen – a publication that shows Pine as a working sample. A demonstration of potential uses, traits, and characteristics that positions the typeface within an editorial design context. Here, Pine is also presented as a typeface intended for reading in a more conventional sense.
References:
Schwenger, Peter: Asemic. the Art of Writing. Minneapolis 2019. University of Minnesota Press
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. First published 1921.
Norwegian translation by Terje Ødegaard. Oslo: Gyldendal, 1999.
Key propositions: 2.1, 2.171, 3, 4.01, 4.022, 4.03.
2.1: We make to ourselves pictures of facts. (p. 16)
2.171: The picture can represent every reality whose form it has. (p. 17)
3: The logical picture of the facts is the thought. (p. 19)
4.01: The proposition is a picture of reality.
The proposition is a model of the reality as we think it is. (p. 31)
4.022: The proposition shows its sense.
The proposition shows how things stand, if it is true.
And it says, that they do so stand. (p. 33)
4.03: A proposition must communicate a new sense with old words.
The proposition communicates to us a state of affairs, therefore it must be essentially connected with the state of affairs.
And the connection is, in fact, that it is its logical picture.
The proposition only asserts something, in so far as it is a picture. (p. 34)
