We Spoke in Symbols
ASII Zine
We Spoke in Symbols is a self-published zine that treats ASCII as a visual medium. Bold typographic spreads, graphic contrast, and deliberate pacing replace instruction with experience. Where ASCII is typically explained as a technical system, this publication lets the characters function as image, texture, and atmosphere.
Scope of Work
✦ Brand Identity
✦ Art Direction
✦ Publication Design
✦ Creative Strategy
✦ Conceptualization
✦ Naming
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ASCII is usually explained, not experienced. That approach limits what it can be and closes off its potential as an expressive visual language.
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When you remove the explanation and focus on composition, scale, and repetition, ASCII stops reading as code and starts reading as image.
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The zine uses bold typographic spreads and graphic contrast, with pacing and negative space. The reader moves through it visually, not analytically.
Brand Identity
We Spoke in Symbols sits somewhere between analog and digital, pulling from the visual language of early computing while feeling handmade and immediate. The design references the origins of ASCII while pushing it into something graphic and expressive.
The imperfect quality is intentional. Print scans, texture, and the roughness of physical reproduction are built into the design rather than cleaned up. That rawness is what separates it from digital precision and gives the publication its character.
The visual language is bold and unapologetic. The result is a zine that looks like it came from a specific moment in time that never quite existed.
