Bangkok Metropolis, Thailand FOLLOW HIM
These lively and quiet, but illustrative forms were designed to express the nature of the people of Thailand and their waterside lifestyle. The color palette simply uses three organic qualities of the physical environment that flow through the blood and daily lives of the Thai people. All these forms and their animations seem to trickle around the idea of more than just a place and grow into the idea of a people. The Na’vi in Avatar come to mind with their deep-rooted connections to nature and their very real physical and spiritual world.
The baseline of the typeface references the water, a surface to travel upon and live life within. The glyphs are the Thai people themselves, above the water, but in constant interaction with its surface. Each glyph and its corresponding motion design brings the form and lifestyle of the Thai people into a pleasing resolution. Even the layperson, ignorant of the meaning and subtlety of the beautiful Thai letter forms can appreciate their fluidity and grace as they move. Though the two-dimensional representation of these aspects of Thailand may have been enough, the animation takes the project to another communicative level, increasing our understanding gently, almost musically. The third dimension comes with ease and in turn, increases our grasp of a specific meaning and a unique people.
It was cogent of Ekawit to bring the Latin forms into this project for the student of design, but something else also happens here. We are confronted with the beauty and simplicity of letters as they are literally. These Latin forms in relation and contrast to the Thai again become ‘pictures.’ We see the primal hieroglyphs. We see language being formed in situ.
Nowadays, we read so much. Our current culture is incredibly inundated with the forms words take that we forget how they were formed. We forget the process. Ekawit’s rendering of this ‘new alphabet’ confronts us with the exotic while simultaneously bringing us into the familiar.
Ekawit’s sketches show a thoughtful process as well as potential for motion. The intimate breakdown of form and geometry is in step with his endgame. Ekawit’s studies and the final work highlight both a region and its beautiful people through letter form, but also bring into high definition the patient and time-consuming practice of the intensely intimate discipline of typography.
Please visit Ekawit’s site on Behance for the videos showing the animations of these beautiful type forms.
citizenfable 