As a graphist and letter designer, Albert Boton has spent a large part of his life creating typographic alphabets – more than thirty are available and used worldwide.
This aficionado of drawing and design and tense curves has a go at the opposite game – that is the “desintegration” of his letters.
For centuries, the work of craftsmen & artists (such as typographers, type cutters, calligraphers, hallmark engravers, publishers and editors…) was to increase the legibility of the characters and typefaces – except for miniatures and the decorated initial, often illegible decorative elements. The hasty eye of the reader perceives the isolated word or the group of letters and words at the expense of the design of each & every letter.
Thus, “kakeboton” is a game that reverses the very essence of this approach by totally or partly concealing some graphic elements of these letters, by bringing out a detail, a curve, a stroke...
It no longer is a reading process, but a mere vision where aesthetics is all that matters.
The idea of presenting these works on kakemonos surfaced at once.
A kakemono (in Japanese: “hanging”) can actually be the support plate for a poem, a painting or a calligraphy on silk or paper.
Thus, the letter – be it cropped, truncated, illegible or complete, becomes a decorative standalone element in its own right.
This typographic game, consisting exclusively of Albert Boton’s alphabets, comes as “kakebotons” to be hanged on walls or self-adhesive – the kakebotons can also be customized, personalized – and these creations are available as folding screens, stoles, cushions, T-shirts…