Rhizomatic Typeface

Chicago Botanic Garden

Typeface Design

2024

In collaboration with Essentials Creative

Rhizomatic is a collaborative art installation between Essentials Creative collective and the scientists and staff at the Chicago Botanic Garden. The project is part of the Lost and Found exhibition taking place throughout the Garden featuring five artworks by different artists. Rhizomatic is inspired by the rhizome as a philosophical concept developed by theorists Deleuze and Guattari. The installation weaves together cultural and scientific stories about diversity and collaboration focusing on seven plants. For each plant we designed a tapestry with the scientific Latin binomial name as well as the common name. For this we designed a custom typeface based on ideas of the rhizome.

In botany, a rhizome is a modified plant stem that grows horizontally underground and forms nodes where it can store nutrients and grow roots downward or shoots upward. This can help the plant spread through asexual reproduction. In philosophy the rhizome can be used as a model for a nonlinear network that connects any point to any other point. It’s a non-hierarchical structure that can be useful to allow for multiple outputs without a central structure. An example of a rhizomatic model is the internet.

The typeface combines geometric and organic forms, referencing digital rhizomes as well as biological ones. The typeface is built out of layers that can make it appear highly complex or more simplified. Nodes were very important to illustrate the interconnected and generative qualities of the rhizome, which are depicted as flat dots as well as volumous structures.