As a directionally-challenged person, I was intrigued by this article and its description of an aboriginal group that adds cardinal directions to many of their statements, making them appear to be “walking compasses.”

The article argues that the habits of speech, what one’s language requires the speaker to think about, makes one more attentive to those details. So when German speakers apply the feminine gender to “bridge”, they tend to think of bridges as elegant. But Spanish speakers, who assign a male gender to “bridge”, tend to think of bridges as strong.

For this typography project, I picked out certain words and phrases and tried to portray the different ways speakers could view them. I churned out many drafts that had these words raining down on the article and changing the shape of the text overall. The effect was just confusing and distracting. I added emphasis to those words as they appeared in the article, which broke up the monotony of the text. Read Less