Defying norms at -21°: how Cotton Design weaved technology and art into Backslash’s visual language

Formerly \Art (‘backslash art’), the art and technology organisation have unveiled a new name and brand identity, crafted by creative agency and design consultancy Cotton Design. Blending technological innovation and artistic expression, the new look leans into a whole spectrum of meanings of the word ‘backslash’ and embraces the client’s unconventional ethos. The backslash (\), serves as both a visual motif and a metaphor for the mission of the organisation, now simply named Backslash. “In many programming languages (like Python, JavaScript, etc.),” Founder & Creative Director Talia Cotton explains, “the backslash is used as what people literally refer to as an ‘escape’ character. This means it tells the computer to treat the next character in a special way that’s different from the normal expected input and output. For example, ‘\n’ doesn’t mean to type an ‘n,’ which would be the normal behaviour. Instead, the backslash signals an escape from the normal way of understanding it, and the computer now reads ‘n’ as ‘new line.’ Also, in some command-line interfaces, the backslash is used to ‘escape’ special characters so that the computer doesn’t interpret them in a special way.” While the old name placed too much emphasis on ‘Art,’ the new one aligns perfectly with Backslash’s goal of supporting nonlinear, unconventional and adventurous art practices. To hone in on the idea of the backslash, Cotton and team looked at the design challenge from multiple angles resulting in surprising visual takes, such as \Type, a custom interactive display typeface that was designed exclusively from -21° backslashes, and comes in four weights and two styles (square and round). “We were enamoured with this concept because we noticed that even though certain characters share the same glyph, in the context of each character, you could still make out what the word is,” says Cotton.