A delightful project, that of the young designer Bjørn Karmann, who in 2015 engraved the 26 letters of the alphabet on the trunk of a tree (a beech tree more precisely), then photographed each year the modification of these typographic scarifications, the different letters changing as the tree grows. The Helvetica font used for the engraving then completely escaped the designer's control, it thickened with the seasons and the growth of the trunk, nature taking back its rights, according to its own rules. Bjørn has contented himself, each year, with precisely capturing the evolution of the initial scar, a new typeface gradually coming to life away from the rigid, cold and mechanical Helvetica of the beginnings. The 5 fonts (for the 5 years of statements) can be downloaded directly from Bjørn Karmann's website, here
(no tree was harmed for this experiment, the designer took care to scarify only a quarter of the circumference of the tree, so as not to disturb its growth)