Ruslan Abasov says designing typefaces is like “dancing” with his arm

Ruslan Abasov’s first foray into typefaces was during his enrollment in design schools in Istanbul – and it was a revelation. Intersecting with his interests in geometric forms, photography and design theory, he was particularly struck by an IsType conference, which inspired him to study type design at ECAL. Now based in Lausanne, Switzerland, Ruslan creates typefaces that are playful and rooted in his keen interests in design education. Seeing letters as textural shapes due to his multi-scriptual past in both Cyrillic and Latin, he treats the alphabet like narratives or acts of storytelling.

In Mouris Display, named after the French word for mouse, Ruslan built an original typeface from a constrained brief: develop an unique tool that would purpose a unique writing style. Thinking outside of the realm of known calligraphy and writing instruments, Ruslan took a collaborator’s suggestion to create letter shapes with a 90s-style computer mouse with a silicon ball on the bottom. Ruslan soaked the trackball in fast-drying ink and freestyled, exploring its free, bouncy movements, something he describes as “dancing” with his arm.

One of Ruslan’s typefaces is Daido Display, an expressive and poetic reflection of typographic discourse on the photographer Daido Moriyama. Fascinated by his interplay of light and shadow, Ruslan concentrated on the core of his language. “Throughout the entire design process I was contemplating the universe of the typeface – by which I mean its music, its feeling, its color code, and photographic sensibility. Thankfully, all of this was already there at the highest level,” says Ruslan.

In Escargot Display, Ruslan further explored machine-dictated Bezier drawing. The idea was to develop an alphabet through collaboration, focusing on the relationship between forms and counter-forms. Given the keywords “condensed” and “slow”, Ruslan added flavours of Art Nouveau, dreamlike forms that dance around upper case letters in order to emphasis slowness within the rigid constraints of a restrained sans-serif typeface. “I treat my typefaces like films. The two practices share many parallels. In the film industry, you receive a brief or script from a production company based on market needs; you gather your ‘cast’,” says Ruslan. “In type design, however, we don’t have this kind of large orchestra or union-based system. Instead, the result often appears as the intellectual property of a single designer, or of a small group in the case of foundries.”