Burnt Words

Burnt Words is a typeface and booklet that was created in collaboration with Johannes Lang. This digital font renders words as burnt matches. The longer the word, the longer the match. The ligature feature of the OpenType feature code looks for the length of the typed word and replaces it with one of up to ten matches of the respective word length.

Besides dozens of burnt matches—long, short, scorched or badly burnt—the character set includes two lighters and some extra long safety matches. Untranslatable characters are automatically converted to the striking surface on the edge of the matchbox. The sample text in this booklet contains, among other things, dozens of big and small fires, love, death, intrigue and plenty of blisters. There is a touch of humour as well.

Happy reading. Don’t burn your fingers.

Burnt Words
Martijn in ‘t Veld

Happy Potato Press, 2021
1st Edition
210 x 297 mm, 16pp; English
Laser printed and hand-bound at the Happy Potato Press