[Image: Typing messages with Katie Holten’s tree alphabet].
You may recall artist Katie Holten’s tree typeface, written-up here a few years back.
Holten has now created a whole new tree alphabet, based on trees growing in the New York City region. “Each letter of the Latin alphabet is assigned a drawing of a tree from the NYC Parks Department’s existing native and non-native trees,” Holten writes, “as well as species that are to be planted as a result of the changing climate. For example, A = Ash.”
That typeface is also available as a free download, so you can type your own forests into existence with abandon. All the world’s literature, translated into trees.
What’s more, Holten is overseeing a program to actually plant the trees referenced by the alphabet, resulting in what she calls an “an alphabetical planting palette: people can give us their messages and we’ll plant them around the city with real trees.”
Follow the project on Holten’s website for updates.
I tried to download and leave – as a comment – a transarborealization of Dante’s “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura / ché la diritta via era smarrita,” but it’s beyond me.
doesn’t seem to work in libre office, sadly.