Now I Know My LSD ABCs: A Trippy Animation of the Alphabet

Many inter­ests have spurred cre­ative alpha­bet col­lec­tions: New York City. Geek­dom. Food snob­bery. Child­hood calami­ty. And now?

Actu­al­ly, LSD ABC, defies neat cat­e­go­riza­tion. Beyond the fact that they’re both spelled out using let­ters, what could Dim Sum pos­si­bly have in com­mon with VHS? Not much pri­or serv­ing as inspi­ra­tional prompts for graph­ic design­ers Lau­rent & Françoise (oth­er­wise known as Lau­ra Sicouri and Kadavre Exquis). Now they’re 1/13th of a delight­ful­ly twist­ed ani­mat­ed whole, one of those dead­line-free pet projects that goes on to spawn a lim­it­ed edi­tion vinyl album.

The duo is prone to fetishiz­ing the anachro­nis­tic tech­nolo­gies of the recent past, in a man­ner slight­ly more ele­gant than come­di­ans Tim Hei­deck­er and Eric Ware­heim. They toss in a foot sim­i­lar to the one Ter­ry Gilliam used to such effect on Mon­ty Python. H and S are sub­ject­ed to the sort of indig­ni­ties Wile E. Coy­ote used to suf­fer at the hands of the Road Run­ner. It’s all tied togeth­er with AT&T Lab’s decid­ed­ly unnat­ur­al-sound­ing Nat­ur­al Voice text-to-speech nar­ra­tion.

While it’s dif­fi­cult to pick a favorite from such a mind bend­ing array, I’m going to have to go with P…for Pet Piano, natch. You?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch All of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions in a Row

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is stymied by the lack of Ys on cer­tain Euro­pean key­boards. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday