12.05.10
Rugzetta
As mentioned, my husband and I went to Turkey last summer. In Turkey, we saw a lot of beautiful rugs with my husband coveted, but they were more expensive than we were ready to cope with.
Like he does every year, my husband had a birthday in the fall. I started thinking about what I could get him for his birthday shortly after we got back. Clearly, he would love a rug, but we also clearly weren’t ready to spend that kind of money (and he would want to be in on the selection process anyway). So I thought about how I could make something in the same style as a rug. I realized that I could print something as a poster, mount it on foam core, glue tassels to the edges, and mount it to the wall. It would then perhaps fulfill his desire for a rug aesthetic, but without the expense.
My husband also likes fonts and languages. I once scored points by making him a shirt with glyphs from many different languages on it for his birthday. Maybe I could make him a “rug” with glyphs from many different writing systems as the graphic elements instead of the flowers and leaves that adorn traditional Turkish and Persian rugs.
Yes, I could! (Click to see a bigger version.)
Rugzetta design
I had a print shop print it out large and mount it on foamcore; I glued tassels to the sides and hung it on the wall:
Rugzetta on the wall
I also made some placemats, and I put a legend on the back:
Rugzetta legend
ten said,
December 11, 2010 at 1:07 pm
I LOVE this rug that you designed! I’m similarly fascinated by languages – mostly natural, some machine – so to see a fairly thorough effort put into this excites me… In particular, the unicode snowman (I have it and the Look of Disapproval each printed out on letter-size paper and hung it up behind me in our open-office setup (I get comments about it for sure!)), the Japanese and Chinese phonetic characters, and finally, what a nice touch to have the happy face right in the middle of the rug. Love it 😀