Tangible type ‐ experiential typography with soap

When the world turned upside down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many things became uncertain, including education. Like the famous internet meme, “The world right now and teachers teaching online,” with the image of the Titanic sank, educators have always been trying to find a way to keep on duty. Especially, art and design educators have agonized over how to keep personalized hands-on experience available as much as possible while practicing physical distancing.

This paper presentation shares how a design educator responded to the uncertainty caused by the pandemic by asking questions: How to provide personal hands-on experience with design and material? How to keep hybrid/digital methods in class? And How to work with constraints but not compromise them.

3D printing and other printing services are available through labs in institutions. Because of the pandemic, many of the services are paused or operating in a limited capacity. Also, as people reluctant to touch something, working with tangible experience became difficult to incorporate in-class virtually and physically. However, there was a good material work with which is soap. Soap is one of the safe materials to touch, and it became one of the much-needed items of everyday life. More importantly, students can work with materials at home and use what they made. It became a hybrid practice by using various analog and digital methods and combining old and new techniques.
Soap is an essential item of everyday life for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. Soap-making history goes back a few thousand years, and soap-making was a highly technical and secretive process. During the pandemic, it became one of the much-needed items of everyday life. Soap was considered an alternative material for tangible type projects at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as people reluctant to touch something. Soap is one of the safe materials to touch, and everyone uses it daily.
This project suggests a new approach toward experiential design and tangible typography in the age of the pandemic with a mundane item, old methods, and new digital technologies: soap, mold making, casting, 3D printing, and laser cutting. Using soap involves multi-sensory experiences using vision, smell, and touch. First of all, letterforms are designed with a concept and 3D printed with PLA plastic, bioplastic widely used in 3D printing. Then silicone mold is made using the 3D printed physical type to produce custom design soap. Once the mold is ready, casting soap is relatively easy. The last step is designing and fabricating a package using laser cutting.
Different analog and digital methods were used in each step for efficiency and based on design decisions. For example, three-dimensional printing has various advantages, such as speedier iteration, single-step manufacturing, affordable production, and customization. However, the biggest downside of the technology is the turnaround time. 3D printing can take from hours to days to complete depending on the size and intricacies. Casting is one of the oldest manufacturing methods. Casting has advantages of low costs, ideal for small quantity production, and speedier production compares to 3D printing. Laser cutting is a way to produce unique solutions for packaging design because of detail, speed, and flexibility. Combining common material and old and new methods of making enables a new way to make unique custom design products from a process.
This project started as a series of experiments using old/new and analog/digital methods during the shutdown. It could be expanded as a class assignment, a workshop, design entrepreneurship, and a community-based event. For educational settings, it could be infused into typography, graphic design, packaging design, and digital fabrication courses. It could be inspirational for both professional practices and design entrepreneurship. Soap is easy and fun to work with, and more importantly, it is useful for everyone as washing hands is one of the most effective ways to prevent infection. It would be expanded as a community-based art and design project.