In September 2019, our small family’s forest was cleared, after most trees had died following a spruce bark beetle outbreak. The terrain became a central point for Summoning a Forest, my artistic doctoral project.
The European spruce bark beetle is an unattractive brown little beetle that lays its eggs in spruce bark. Its larvae much themselves a way out, leaving intricate traces in the process which resemble human writing. This explains the insect’s Latin name: Ips typographus. In Dutch, it is known as ‘Letterzetter’, which, in turn translates back to English as ‘compositor’, a person organising letters for print. Ips typographus is part of a larger species of so-called ‘engraver’s beetles’.
The traces cut off a spruce’s sap stream. A healthy tree is able to resist these otherwise useful beetles (they clean up dead wood), but increasing drought and heat stress weakens often already ecologically compromised spruce plantations. All over Europe dead or dying spruce forests can be found.
My family’s little forest – bought in the 1960s by my grandfather, and now my mother’s – was cleared in the early Autumn of 2019. As it turned out, it was not really a forest, but a spruce monoculture plantation. The beetle outbreak affected all spruce, which made up perhaps 95% of the tree species on terrain of about a hectare in size. After the dead trees were removed, a clear-cut remained: the dense and dark ‘forest’ of my youth was abruptly replaced with a barren terrain covered in jumbled roots and leftover branches.
But it was also littered with pieces of bark, engraved with spruce bark beetle traces. Those little ‘tablets’ appeared almost readable. I collected examples of those bark fragments, resembling texts set in a hieroglyphical alien alphabet.
What are they telling us?
What does the European spruce bark beetle outbreak mean for our Western European perception of natural forests, for the non-native spruce, for climate shifts, and for our landscape management?
I used the engraved ‘writings’ to try to understand what the beetles’ message is. One of these attempts is Ips typography, a font that is based on the insect’s traces.
Letterzetter: the font-maker
Ips typographus is a font, based on drawings I made of Ips typography traces. Font designer Jeroen van der Ham, is specialized in transforming handwriting into fonts. He retains mistakes and irregularities of – his own – handwriting, resulting in fonts such as Dearjoe, Old Letterhand, Coalhand Luke, seriousSally and serialSue, mixtapeMike, onetrickTony, moanLisa, and fancyPens.
I have known Jeroen – Joebob Graphics – since art school. We collaborated before, when he designed the publication of my graduation paper in 1998. It only made sense to invite him to co-design Ips typography: a wonderful occasion to reconnect (even in Covid-times) for this artistic collaboration.
I gave Jeroen photos of my Ips drawings, and brought him some actual bark samples. The only request I had was that the font should not be entirely legible – I proposed a 26% readability, which should be taken as a not too serious guideline.
The font is less suitable for body text, and paragraphs, but should rather be used for drop caps or to produce ‘hidden’ texts: text that resembles traces, but that are able to reveal messages that can be read with some effort. Read more here (font available on request!).
