TDC63 Judge’s Choice: Lingering

Ksenya Samarskaya
Aug 23, 2017 · 2 min read
Lingering font by Zhang WeiMin

If life is divided into a binary of elements that’re hard vs. soft, most everything in my quotidian experience fits in the former: all sounds, east coast nature, west coast nature, logic, architecture, every typeface I’ve ever drawn. Weimin’s glyphs end up as a balance on the other side, amidst tactile visceral pleasure — a realm of soft nostalgia, melty-Mickey tee-shirts, skin, fur, gallium, modeled virtual reality.

The design judging process is an experience of observing elements fall apart under closer scrutiny. Was the full typeface shown? Did we spot a maladapted kern pair? Does the specimen wording pantomime the banal? Weimin’s constructions, however, refuse to stay within the constraints of established expectation. Instead, the typeface calls for our suspension of disbelief. The glyphs draw us into their reality — seducing towards a pop cultural pin-prick of wrangling gesticulation, into a happy place of pure emotion and raw movement.

If you’re intending to purchase, this is not a font that’ll stay limited to the pages or posters it starts out on. Anticipate it to pivot at night, to finger-tut up the walls and across the ceiling of your bedroom, to swell to the size of a gallery before it leaps out its window, only to shrink back down to size and scatter about while giggling wildly.

Originally published for TDC63 in 2017.

Writeskaya from Samarskaya & Partners

Samarskaya & Partners

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Ksenya Samarskaya

Written by

Type Design, Visual Communications, Brand Strategy, Cultural Semantics. Infinite circle-back of linking: http://samarskaya.com/, http://log.samarskaya.com/.

Writeskaya from Samarskaya & Partners

Samarskaya & Partners

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