Because I want to do more with the fact that the rope is easily flexible and shapeable, I wanted to try if it is possible to form 'digital' letters with the rope, which I could perhaps then convert into a typeface.

This experiment was actually very simple. I took the piece of rope I had lying around and started forming letters with it. I took a photo of each letter (I made five of them). I then imported these photos into Adobe Illustrator and tried to convert them into digital shapes. I did this each time using a different preset in Illustrator's vectorize tool.

I quickly noticed that it is difficult to form clear letters out of a single piece of rope. For the 'B', for example, you have to make the same curve twice to be able to form the letter. That is also why I couldn't make an 'F', for instance. I also noticed that it is difficult to subsequently convert the photo into a good vector shape. This is because Illustrator also picks up a lot of the background. I think you could solve this by removing the surrounding noise with the eraser tool, but I think that would also take a lot of time.

After this experiment, I wonder if it would be better to work with separate, loose pieces of rope, but I also immediately think that you would need many pieces of varying lengths to make clear letters. You would then have to cut pieces of rope for each specific letter.

I don't think I will continue specifically developing letters with the rope, but I do find it interesting to work with the flexibility of the material.

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