The Barbed Ward
The Barbed Ward is the Result of a Workshop at ECAL MATD, theorizing about how type would have developed if the Trajan Column had been destroyed.
I dreamt up a very dystopian – dark fantasy inspired – world, where people believed to ward off evil through thorns, as they believed that evil could not penetrate them. I then imagined some sort of prayer book, which had been set in a thorned type; and the type here is then derived from the type set in that book.
A vast landscape of ruin and decay. Crumbling stone fortresses dot the scorched earth, their towers broken and ragged like the teeth of a beast long forgotten. Jagged mountains loom in the distance, their peaks lost in ash-streaked skies. Below, twisted forests of blackened trees sprawl, their roots exposed and writhing like serpents. The ground is cracked, scarred by ancient battles and cursed magic, rivers of ash flowing sluggishly through the valleys. In the distance a desolate village, its few remaining structures half-buried in ash and bone. Stray figures, their forms hunched and wrapped in ragged cloaks, sift through the debris, searching for something long lost. Strange symbols, barely visible, are etched into the stone — forgotten remnants of a time when men feared what lurked beyond the veil.