Anna Laing-Fraser: Building Characters

About

SomoS Art House is proud to present a work presentation with artist talk by SomoS Artist-in-Residence Anna Laing-Fraser. With her latest project, Building Characters, Anna Laing-Fraser explores the structural relationship between both typography and architecture through her own personal style. Based on her understanding of and exploration in illustration and graphic design, she approaches a new perspective of how two different disciplines such as architecture and type can be combined into a unique hybrid design. For the presentation, Laing-Fraser demonstrates and displays a variety of up-to-date characters she has designed towards her final alphabet. A special edition of a pop-up publication based on the three-dimensional relationship between letters and buildings will be presented for the first time as well.

As a designer, Laing-Fraser has always had a strong fascination with the relationship between typography and architecture. The grid-like formation, similarities between structural elements, even the impact both design disciplines have on our society. Through her professional experience as both a graphic designer and scenic film artist, furthermore working alongside set designers, she began to see a unique structural relationship between her interest in type and the blueprint designs her colleagues were rendering. This further inspired the designer to discover a new territory of typographic expression with architecture as the visual foundation.

Based on Laing-Fraser ’s residency experience in Berlin, she has had the opportunity to allow the urban environment play an influential role in her process. Becoming integrated into this highly creative and innovative city with plenty of inspiring architecture, further helped initiate her final character designs. The vision of this project is to proceed on with the exploration of type and architecture by designing a full alphabet.

About Anna Laing-Fraser

Anna Laing-Fraser is a graphic designer and scenic film painter based out of Toronto, Canada. Through her digital-based studies and a career as an artist in the Canadian Film Industry, she has had the opportunity to investigate creativity through both a malleable and technical means, thus believing compositions can benefit by the merging of the two components. Laing-Fraser enjoys incorporating multimedia and whimsical elements into projects as an approach to evoke a more fluid connection with the viewer. Out of a longstanding interest in typographic forms, she spends a great deal of time thinking about ways in which letters can express individual characteristics.