Not feeling Christmassy yet? Watch this four-hour Yule Log video made using wooden type cutouts

To mark what is, for many, the most wonderful time of the year – for others it’s just another Saturday but Tesco Express is closed – digital type foundry Sharp Type has released The Yule Ogg: a four-hour recording inspired by those fireplace videos played on TVs across the nation during December, along with Bublé’s Christmas album. Delivering a type twist on the holiday classic, the foundry has replaced the standard log fire with CNC wooden cutouts of its typeface Ogg Text.

The video features the entire Latin alphabet of Ogg Text in wood form, the concept being that the designers would burn each letter, one by one, in a fireplace and capture the entire process on video. Shot over several hours in a single evening using one of the Sharp Type team’s personal fireplaces, the recording provides the foundry with its “inOGGural YouTube video”.

“We initially wanted to use Ogg Display for the woodcuts but found the letterforms too detailed for the cutting process,” Sharp Type co-founder Chantra Malee explains to It’s Nice That. “This, however, meant that we were able to use our optical-sized version, Ogg Text. We found a studio in the East Bay called Neal’s CNC, and they were pivotal in guiding us along the fabrication process and realising our vision. It’s almost a shame that we had to light the letters on fire because they produced such beautiful work.”

While – fun fact – the first Yule Log aired in 1966 when WPIX-TV Channel 11 in New York City looped a 17-second fireplace clip as a holiday card for viewers, Sharp Type’s remake was made to mark the shortest day of 2021, this Tuesday 21 December.

Imparting its yuletide gift to the world via Youtube, Sharp Type hopes the video can be a “go-to for [it's] design community while they work or play. If you’re having a dinner party and simply want a good-looking and good-sounding Yule Log video to play in the background, this works. (We went the extra mile to mic the crackling of the fire so that the video is both visually and sonically pleasing.) In the end, there’s something calming but slightly provocative about watching our own letters decompose in a fire. A lit fireplace – even one via YouTube – is a meditative space that imparts warmth, and we wanted to share that, with a wink.”