Malaysia-based graphic designer Mei Linn Chan is still a student, but you wouldn’t know it based on her amazing work including this project entitled Leaf Type. Using an exacto knife, Chan delicately hand-carved block letters into the central area of found leaves. She then paired the solid designs with intricate patterns that mimic the leaf’s shape and followed the path of its veins.
The results are a fragile and ornamental collection of all 26 letters of the alphabet. She photographed each letter and presented the series as an organized grid, in which the backgrounds reveal the carefully carved letters. Apparently, after Chan completed the alphabet, she wanted to do more because she continued carving until she completed numbers zero through nine. The series is evidence of a patient artist with an extremely steady hand. Hopefully she’ll consider making more of these designs with words, phrases, and maybe even entire sentences!
