Things of the Past: Used or Used to

In 2006 I took part in a ground-breaking experimental typography project called the Random Project, the final outcome of which was exhibited at the London Design Festival in the same year. An international collective of graphic designers and artists (who had all studied the Experimental Typography course at LCC taught by Sarah Hyndman) developed typography-led projects based on randomly selected words from Time Out, a weekly magazine on events in London. Each participant picked a number between 1-100, which corresponded to an unseen word cut out from the magazine. This randomly selected word became the basis for our projects. My word was “BEAUTIFUL”!

In addition, the Random Project ran a Random postcard project, which was opened to all and was based on the same principle as the main project. Many prominent figures such as Alan Kitching, Alan Rickman, Stefan Sagmeister and Humphery Ocean responded to the call for artists. One of the many words I picked for the postcards was “USED” (left).

In this postcard I primarily responded to the word “USED” as an adjective – “a used cigarette”, “a used ticket”. However, the word can also be used to refer to something that USED TO happen in the past. So the black ink footprint over the unfinished cigarette could convey a different meaning:  “I used to smoke and I no longer smoke now!”.

Why did I come to this? This postcard has come back to my mind today as it is my first day as a non-smoker. I’m not sure I want to tell everyone (although this is one suggestion from a leaflet), but I thought I would post some of the photos to show what my ashtray looked like this morning! Isn’t it disgusting!? But it could be art!

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