Gee, Lee!

When he isn't altering other people's advertising in the Bubble Project, Ji Lee also spends his time developing thought-provoking designs.

First Published in

3D Chess Board

Chess pieces have been designed in numerous ways, ranging from intricately carved ivory pieces, to the Simpsons cartoon characters. In comparison, the designers seem to have overlooked the board. With this in mind, Ji Lee designed a three-dimensional chess board, introducing an element of terrain to this territorial game's battle field.

Nine Circle Numbers

NCN are new numbers based on a visual logic of arithmetic progression. Unlike the Arabic numbers, which are a set of abstract symbols, the use of NCN does not rely on memorising the shapes of each number, but rather on counting the elements contained in its nine-circles grid.

In the same way we don't often stop and think about the air we breathe, we don't really think about numbers and their significance because we have gotten too accustomed to them. NCN allow us to see that numbers can be mysterious, playful and beautiful. It only depends on how we see them. The image is a calendar designed with NCN.

Univers Revolved, a 3-dimensional Alphabet

Univers Revolved is a three-dimensional alphabet. To form the letters of Univers Revolved, a simple geometric formula was applied to the capital letters of the widely used Univers typeface. With the help of a 3-D computer programme, each letter was revolved 360° around a vertical axis drawn at its left-most point.

Unlike the letters of our standard alphabet, those of Univers Revolved are bilaterally symmetrical and may therefore be read in both left-to-right and right-to-left directions. And because they are three-dimensional, they can be stacked, arranged in circles, or set in motion; they can become toys, pieces of furniture, buildings, or chocolate candies.

The revolved letters create a new alphabet that recaptures the element of experimentation the Latin alphabet held in its early days. Encountering it for the first time, we re-experience the excitement of learning to form words from letters as children. Univers Revolved, a Three-Dimensional Alphabet was published as a visual puzzle book by Harry Abrams in May 2004. The book became the winner of AIGA's 50 books / 50 covers and New York Book Award.

For more info, visit: www.universrevolved.com

Watch the Talk with Ji Lee