Nico Bakh 2025

Abstract

This thesis highlights the creation and application of Bakhchin: an ornamental display typeface developed through a process of typographic deconstruction and cultural reflection. Drawing from personal history as a second-generation American with Georgian, Armenian, and Russian influences, the project explores how language, memory, and identity are interwoven through typographic form. Originating from a core memory and experience of creating Cyrillic letters from a roman alphabet for memorial ribbons in a family floral business, the typeface evolves into an immersive installation exploring themes of identity. Research into experimental typographers and designers—such as Herb Lubalin, Massimo Vignelli, and Eikou Zhang, informs the project’s focus on craft, calligraphy and architectural principles of structure, scale, and spatial interactions. The calla lily, a flower culturally associated with masculinity, becomes the foundational reference for the typeface’s visual characteristics. Words embedded with cultural and personal significance, including terms tied to gender expression, homophobia, and silence are recontextualized to reclaim agency and challenge inherited cultural constructs. The installation features cyanotype prints, embroidery, newsprint, patterns, projection, gold-cut stencils, and an immersive, sanctuary-like environment to examine how typography can function simultaneously as artifact, narrative, and spatial experience. Influences from immersive installations, contemporary art, and floral arrangements shape the multisensory experience of the space. Through these materials, Bakhchin becomes both a typographic system and a tool in exploring themes of reconstruction, queerness, silence, and cultural inheritance. Ultimately, the project positions typography as a medium capable of articulating complex themes. Bakhchin reflects the fragility, fluidity, and resilience of identity as a second-generation American—by reclaiming language as both personal and collective connection, and inviting viewers to encounter identity through form, image, and light— by proudly wearing blue.