Type tool Hypha turns letters into shrooms

Pentagram’s Jody Hudson-Powell and Luke Powell have designed a digital tool based on mushroom growth simulation algorithms, which lets users ‘grow’ fungi-esque type

Hypha was designed as part of the pair’s work on the identity for Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of Fungi – an exhibition hosted at Somerset House earlier this year. It allows users to input words which are then turned into bulbous, mushroom-like letterforms.

The generative type is based on the growth patterns of mycelium and mushroom spore, according to Pentagram. This means characters are procedurally created, producing unique shapes each time.

Users can choose how wild they want things to get as well, by setting the mutation level on a sliding scale from ‘regular’ to ‘overgrown’.

Letterforms can then be viewed as ‘mycelium’ – which shows the strand-like skeleton that underpins their shapes, reminiscent of the hyphae filaments that make up a mycelium – or as ‘fruiting’.

Users that want to take things further can also upload their own 3D mesh as the basis for growing digital mushroom-based objects.

hyphahypha.com; pentagram.com