Concept
Why a flower made of letters
The inspiration for this came from a TikTok video by @purpleflavoredgrape showing a polka tattoo flower. What struck me was how the petals had this bold, graphic quality with rounded tips and clean symmetry.
I wanted to see if I could recreate that same feeling using just typography. No drawing tools, no vectors, just letters arranged to look like a flower. It's a way of testing how far you can push type before it stops being readable and becomes purely visual.
How It Works
Building blocks and construction
- Petals: Each petal is made from the glyph "|" and "()" scaled up and rotated. The serif glyphs create natural tapered edges like ink pooling at the end of a brush stroke.
- Center: The flower bulb uses the letter "O" which gives that circular core.
- Stem: A vertically stretched "|" works as the stem, keeping everything within the same letterform family.
- Symmetry: Six petals arranged in radial balance, echoing the diagonal grid system used throughout this project.
Design Thinking
What this experiment proves
This exercise shows that typography doesn't have to be limited to words. Letters can be design objects with their own shapes, proportions, and visual rhythms. When you strip away their meaning and focus purely on form, they start to behave like illustration.
Using a single weight keeps the composition cohesive, like a tattoo artist using one needle size throughout a piece. The consistency in stroke width creates unity even when the letters are distorted or rotated.
What I learned here is that the structure of Noto Serif, the serifs and curves and counters, translates really well to nontextual applications. The flower still feels like typography, but it functions as an image. That duality is what the Polka Tattoo Typography Lab is all about.
