Recreating the Past

Recreating past through addition of new dimension to the formal design

An original Karel Martens design was selected to be reimagined into a new version of itself. I introduced an additional dimension to the original form of his work while preserving its defining characteristics. Using the same letterpress technique, I developed a fresh concept that expands upon and bends the primary idea behind his design.

Drawing inspiration from two prominent shapes in Karel Martens' artwork, I developed a typeface family that preserves the signature overlap element seen in the original design. A physical recreation of his work was done using handpress technique and printed with the same two colors—red and blue—on pages from an old dictionary. These pages were joined together to form a large, continuous sheet for printing. This approach reflects Karel Martens' practice of using letterpress printing on pre-printed paper materials.