There are no rules, such as the structure of plant roots, fungi, and blood vessels, and life is felt in these structures, where the beginning and the end are unknown. This structure was referred to as “rhizome” in the book Mille Plateaux (1980) by the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and rhizome is commonly used as a philosophical thought word. A rhizome is a concept in post-structuralism describing a nonlinear network that “connects any point to any other point.”
Many artists wanted to incorporate the philosophical concept of the rhizome into their works even before they existed. Jackson Pollock’s action-painting works well explain the abstraction of the Expressionist series described by Deleuze/Guattari. Michael Fried (in a commentary on Pollock’s action-painting work) described this as “refusing to bring one’s attention to a focus anywhere.” If you look at Jackson Pollock’s work, your gaze does not stay in any one place, and your gaze is given evenly. This is the smooth space that Deleuze/Guattari spoke of. It becomes a smooth and homogeneous space where the gaze is evenly distributed and equalized. Deleuze/Guattari sums it up as “a line that draws no contours, does not constrain any form, constantly changing direction.”
This rhizome concept is opposite to the typeface design. Typeface design reproduces the shape of typefaces. Rules are very important in typeface design. The height, thickness, blank space, etc. of the typeface all follow the rules, and even breaking the rules follows the new rules. It conflicts with the characteristics of amorphous, disordered, and unregulated rhizomes. This study is a typography experiment to express the rhizome, which is opposed to the typeface design, as a typeface. Through this experiment, we intend to expand the abstract expression of typeface design.