It's ironic that in an age where almost all design happens on computers, some of the best designers are getting their hands dirty, fashioning typefaces out of everything from moss to human skin. In fact, if it can be bent, shaved, melted, twisted, or pressed, odds are that some clever young graphic designer has tried to make it into a typeface (and then taken a picture).

Authors Jeanette Abbink & Emily CM Anderson have spent three years collecting the best examples of the form, and their new book, out this month 3DTypography ($45, Mark Batty), contains works by over 100 different designers. It's a stunning, inspiring cornucopia of eye candy--and here's a taste.

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Kyle Bean, working with Josh White and Rory Taylor, created this illustration for the University of Brighton's 2009 thesis show.

The Victorian dress references the school's 150th anniversary.

It's taken Clotilde Olyff, a design professor in Brussels, 20 years of beach combing to create nearly 30 stone alphabets, which she swears haven't been retouched.

Dutch designer Thijs verbeek created "Typeface in Skin" using clothespins, pinching the skin of various volunteers.

The quality of letters changes, depending on where the pins are placed and whether the skin is loose, tight, or fleshy.

This one's from the pages of Fast Company. For an illustration in the front of the magazine, Owen Gildersleeve, a British designer, created a type illustration using office detritus.

For Graphic magazine, Gildersleeve created a typeface using broken records.

Autobahn created an entire book of landscape-inspired typefaces; the picture is the cover.

Amandine Alessandra, in explaining her "Booksetting" project, notes that in surrounding colored books with white ones to make the letters appear, she's mirroring the age-old letterpress process: To create large areas of white around a letter, those typesetters use wooden blocks called "furniture."

Dutchman Thomas Vroon hangs his "Garment Graffiti" in unassuming locations.

Dan Tobin Smith manipulates perspective and color to create type that can only be seen in real life from one specific angle.

Tobin Smith assembled odds-and-ends to create a one-off illustration of the logotype of T, the New York Times' style magazine.

For a typography workshop, students at ECAL, a legendary Swiss design school, drew the word "dream" in a parking lot using shopping carts. By working at such a large scale, they say they gained a new appreciation for the minute adjustments behind a successful typeface.