In many design projects much initial research and many visual tests get left behind, never to see the light of day. But sometimes unused ideas are reworked and find their way into new projects. This is the case here. We took the opportunity during the designing of the book cover for Jesus' Son to create an alphabet using the scraps of rusty metal we had collected.

In doing this I am reminded that when I first started working as a designer it was common to create lettering for a particular piece of work, especially posters. But in most cases it wouldn't have crossed our minds to construct a whole font from such a work, let alone commercialize it. One-off lettering was exactly that: something created for a very particular work, where only the necessary letters were designed. ‘Rust’ then, is not a font, it is simply an exploration of letterform possibilities, and, without apology, an open-ended playful indulgence.

(below) Poster made with the individual scraps of metal we collected.