in progress...

While going through my research all over again and looking for different ways to communicate my ideas and present my findings, I noticed that I had made quite extensive research on letter form distortion and alterations,which I thoroughly ignored as the project moved on.Now I decided that they should also be included in some way,especially since my kaleidoscopic typeface is based on such distortion.

Having in mind that the kaleidoscope is basically a tube of mirrors, through which a reflected image is produced, I wanted to explore all types of reflection that a mirror could provide by using letters instead of images.My previous kaleidoscopic typeface experiments have been done by using a teleidoscope. Unlike other kaleidoscopes, teleidoscopes have a lens and an open view.In that way they can be used to form kaleidoscopic patterns from objects outside the instrument, rather than from items installed as part of it. Depending on the number and composition of the mirrors the lenses differ, so does the patterns produced as well.After obtaining a pattern composition from 3 type of kaleidoscopic lenses, I decided to try a method of reflection that is less complicated by using a single mirroring surface.However, I was not interested in mirroring whole letter forms so I used the mirror to position it within the form,on one its two axis. At first, I divided each letter into four quadrants and using a mirror developed 4 variations of the typeface by reflecting two quadrants at a time.

Visually, I was very pleased with the results because depending on the type of reflection and which two quadrants were reflected, the four specimens produced were quite different and at the same time shared common features.They also ended up having the roundness of completely new and usable typefaces that seriously challenged legibility and in a way presented the level of mirroring generally used in typography. Due to this use of mirroring of characters in some typefaces (like 'd' and 'b' , 'p' and 'q') people with dyslexic problems experience great difficulties in reading.Is this condition prompted in any way from the long exposure to such typefaces?

Used in order to simplify alphabetic codes,mirroring sometimes can have negative effects if it continues as a trend. This is evident through my mirroring typeface where nearly 80% of the letters are still recognisable or resemble other characters after the alteration.This piece shows what the prospect could be if we go too far with this simplistic approach to type.