Ice Nine is a typeface based upon the book Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. It was developed as an experiment in unique and self generated letterforms, using frozen substances which were then thawed, photographed and digitally transformed into the letters here.
In Cat's Cradle, 'ice-nine', a polymorph of water, was initially developed as a way to freeze mud, a constant problem for troops. The isotope was solid at room temperature, and even the smallest seed of it could be used to freeze an entire quagmire. This is soon realised to be more dangerous than the atomic bomb as it could easily lead to freezing all water on earth.
As people are mostly water, ice-nine would kill nearly instantly when ingested or brought into contact with soft tissues exposed to the bloodstream, such as the eyes. For this reason the choice was made to create the typeface using materials to which would look like blood.
The element of chance was crucial in the process of creating this typeface. After moulds were made in vacuum formed plastic, they were filled with a mixture of different liquids to simulate the colour, viscosity and thermal properties of blood.
The digital typeface, alongside some of the photographed letterforms and a screen print of the typeface are shown here.
