Lettering guide — shablones as narrative systems
By Kristí Fekete, Frankie and Mathias Mu
A lettering guide is a type of ruler used to draw uniform characters. Usually, it takes the shape of a shablone made of plastic or paper, with cutouts of various shapes, including letters, numbers, lines, and curves. Such guides are a tool to ensure a quick, consistent visual in lettering and technical drawing. They standardize visual expression.
This research class will explore this tension between a tool made to standardize and a personal visual language. Students will create a ruler-like object that embeds a personal visual language — a personal visual system. Each student will bring their own miscellaneous item (be it, for example, an apple, a key, a water bottle) and use it as a visual base for the lettering guide.
The creative process will be hands-on and informed by differing levels of abstraction. Students begin with their found object, which is then progressively abstracted through drawing and experimentation. The workshop will use accessible, hands-on techniques, such as cutting, layering, tracing, and simple carving with paper, cardboard, or foam. It will be held at Mixlab, allowing for digital methods (basic vector drawing for laser cutting or simple 3D processes). These methods will be introduced in an intuitive way, requiring no prior technical experience.
The research class draws attention to the relationship between tool and authorship: while the tool itself may disappear in use, it continues to shape every mark it produces. The proposed methodology investigates how design tools prescribe visual expression, and how reimagining them can generate new modes of authorship and creative inquiry. As a final outcome, the student-made shablones will be used to create a collective banner.
Kristí Fekete
Kristí Fekete (she/her) is an artist with a dual practice as a designer and writer. She has an interest in the shifting relations between reader, writer, and text. The socio-political context of these relations, and the narratives that stem from them. In her work, language is a collective space to build alternative futures. Her projects most typically take the form of publications, both analog and digital ones. Kristí Fekete’s practice is much like a pendulum movement between digital and analog; exploring and getting inspired from what happens within this swinging motion.
At the Academy, Fekete is a former researcher and current teacher in the Graphic Design department.
Frankie
Frankie is a multidisciplinary creative originally from Vietnam, now based in Belgium. With a background spanning various cultures and professional fields, they navigate life with multiple names, each tied to different aspects of their journey. Whether in personal or professional spaces, they embrace fluidity in identity, allowing their work and presence to speak beyond labels. Their process is one of constant thinking, rethinking, and tinkering—shaping interactions, questioning norms, and exploring the ever-evolving relationship between humans and technology.
At the Academy, Frankie is conducting the one-year research project Personal Bubble. It explores the concept of personal space in today’s interconnected world. Through a series of design-based experimentation, it seeks to confront modern isolation, intimacy, and the impact of digitalization on human interaction.
Mathias Mu
Mathias Mu is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher based in Antwerp (BE). In his practice, Mu embraces speculative world building, digital folklore and technoromanticism in relation to nature, as well as digital fabrication techniques like 3D printing, exploring their potential for artistic expression within the context of contemporary art. Mu creates objects, digital environments, interactive installations and sound works. His work questions the increasingly blurry boundaries between the organic and the artificial.
At the Academy, Mathias Mu is conducting the two-year research project NEO SEER. It explores a series of interactive and responsive objects that allows you to explore what they are thinking through an artificial stream of consciousness as they observe their surroundings.
Mathias Mu is also the coordinator of the Academy’s Mixlab.
>> This research class is part of the Research Week during the annual research festival ARTICULATE.
