For their project ‘Fresh Fonts’ the dutch collective Autobahn drew the typeface helvetica using
toothpaste, tomato ketchup and hair gel. They then used these experiments to create the
digital typefaces ‘heldentica’ , ‘tomatica’ and ‘gelvetica’, which you can now download for
free from Autobahn’s site.
The fonts are pretty awesome, but the process is equally as interesting. This sort of thing is pretty inspiring. I would love to build on the library made available via Autobahn with new condiments such as relish, or dijon mustard for cool textures, and branch out into candy such as Nerds, Smarties, or even chunky brown sugar. Perhaps we can convince Autobahn to open their library to accept submissions.