Emi Takahashi's Living Matter: Glyphs from Agar, Mould, and Duckweed

Emi Takahashi, an artist and designer from Montreal, specializes in graphic creations that convert concealed patterns from the natural world into logos, glyphs, and typefaces. Her work is characterized by a meticulous focus on natural materials and experimentation, balancing between intervention and allowing the materials to influence the outcome. She has crafted unique glyphs for Ganni through cyanotype printing on agar, utilizing different exposure times and citric acid. Additionally, she collaborated with experimental animator Nik Arthur to animate duckweed for A24. For the creative studio Human Person in LA, she designed a logo and typeface from mould. Takahashi has also engaged in washi papermaking and processed kozo fibres in Kochi, Japan. At the time of the interview, she was participating in a stone-carving workshop led by Jules Durand in Lurs, France, with limited access to computers and the internet. Her notable projects include Ghost Orchard - Jessamine Music Video (2022), Tyler McGillivary / Secret Garden (2024), Where Grape Leaves Grow (2022), Organima: Ksha-Sha (2024), KAZÉ·風 (2024), and Dog-Strangling Vine Script (2025). This article was authored by Ellis Tree, a staff writer at It's Nice That, and published on September 23, 2026.