Relic

Relic — Senior Thesis Work

SENIOR STUDIO, CONNECTICUT COLLEGE | WINTER 2025 — SPRING 2026

A book and gallery installation examining vernacular typography — the expressive, handmade lettering found in the built environments of working-class and urban neighborhoods. As corporate rebranding increasingly flattens visual culture toward uber-minimalist "refined taste," the lettering that makes communities visually distinct is quietly disappearing. Relic treats what remains as worth preserving.

The project began with a portable scanner used to capture vernacular signage across New Hampshire: letters pulled from storefronts, murals, and facades at high resolution. The resulting scans were laid out in a book that functions as both archive and manifesto, pairing the found letterforms with text arguing for visual richness and expressiveness in the face of homogenization. The large-format prints, exhibited in a gallery installation, transforms the scans into designed objects. The shapes of these prints echo the forms of the lettering itself, pushing the found material past documentation and into a designed object.