Asemica
Character Building
ELEMENTS
The building blocks of every Asemica composition are randomly chosen from a set of 100 elements derived from English-language letters and symbols.
These fragments of glyphs rotate, flip, and transform to create hundreds more possibilities.
Every element has at least one flat point, or terminal, that aligns with one of the three universal baselines, allowing it to connect to the flat points of other elements.
Each of the 100 elements flips horizontally and vertically, and can jump baselines, in order to create hundreds of element placement possibilities.
CHARACTERS
Characters are made from randomly selected elements which slide together along the three baselines to touch at their flat points.
Each set of elements could potentially combine in many different ways, but the algorithm prioritizes layouts based on:
Maximizing the number of flat point connections
Minimizing the overlap between elements
Creating a narrow overall character shape
Finding and fine-tuning these element-combining rules was the most delicate and intensive challenge of the project. We looked at thousands of character outputs along the way, selecting ones we didn’t like and tweaking the rules until we liked 100% of the outputs.
Curve elements
Straight elements
Thin elements
Mixed elements
Elements fall into three categories: curve, straight, and thin. Each character gets a random assortment of the above, and each character gets 1-8, or sometimes 12 elements.
Inspired by school paper used to practice handwriting, light pink, blue, and white lines become the sometimes-visible foundation of Asemica.
Composition examples with baselines showing
