A few weeks ago, my typography class did an assignment on minimalization. The goal was to explore and experiment with various ways of minimalizing letterforms. And by minimalize I mean taking away from the letter without destroying it's readability. Students had to focus on one letter and one letter only for their examples - I chose the letter "E". Our examples had to include 3 different techniques for minimalizing the letter
1.
Minimalization by other letterforms.
Subtracting from our letter with other letters.
2. Minimalization by shapes.
Using shapes to subtract from or crop parts of our letter.
3. Minimalization by cropping within shapes.
Focusing on the negative space left behind.
Here are my examples (click on image to view larger on Flickr):
And here are some examples done by previous students:

Nick Melton

Joseph Bash

Holly Smith

Reina Castellanos

Katie Simari

Ed Cross

Efrain Lopez

Aaron Fischer