Abstruse Room Signs

Pouring across the kitchen table with a tenacity rarely expressed through pencil crayons, we drilled our implements into our respective sheets of paper, externalizing the machinations of our minds for all to see. It was another team-building exercise at Philip Sung Design, but this one was different.

About ten minutes earlier, we had been unceremoniously summoned from our desks to the kitchen table by Edith. From some invisible repository, she then produced an assortment of papers containing renderings of surreal, thematically-abstruse subjects. The more we examined them, like inkblot tests, the more cryptic they became.

Finally, she revealed that these were examples of abstract signs with oblique symbols for the spaces that they represent. Our challenge, she continued, was to create signs for the rooms in our studio by drawing whatever oddity came to mind when we thought of the given room. For the washroom, for instance, she had rendered a lobster, exemplifying the permissible gulf between reference and referent. With our paths newly illuminated, we reached into the pile of supplies she’d assembled, plucked what we needed, and dove head-first into the realm of the absurd.

The top-left one is for the vestibule by Alexander, the top-centre is for the cutting room by Bill, the bottom-left is for the kitchen by Edith, the bottom-centre is for the washroom by Edith, and the right is for the board room by Bill.