typography

Posts tagged
with typography

Art

A Miniature City Built with Metal Typography

Type City is a recent artwork by artist Hong Seon Jang that uses pieces of movable type from a printing press to create an elaborate cityscape. It’s fascinating to watch as the need for printed books and typography wanes, the unused objects themselves are more frequently used as an actual medium. Jang also completed a much larger Type City in 2009. Also, if you liked this, make sure you watch the creation of Ephemicropolis by Peter Root, a city built from 100,000 staples. Images courtesy Hong Seon Jang and David B. Smith Gallery. (via quipsologies)

Art Design

Knife Typography

Life is Beautiful is a 2009 installation by Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri using hundreds of kitchen knives to create some exquisite typography.

Art

Text Drawings Created by Cutting Thousands of Letters from Books and Religious Texts

Throne: The Book of Revelation; letters cut from the Koran, 44.5 x 30 in, 2012

Throne: The Book of Revelation (detail); letters cut from the Koran, 44.5 x 30 in, 2012

Throne: The Book of Revelation (detail); letters cut from the Koran, 44.5 x 30 in, 2012

Bliss; letters cut from the Koran, 9 x 7.75 in, 2011

Bliss (detail); letters cut from the Koran, 9 x 7.75 in, 2011

The Satanic Verses: “Repentance” from the Koran; letters cut from “The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie, 21 x 19 in, 2012

The Satanic Verses: “Repentance” from the Koran (detail); letters cut from “The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie, 21 x 19 in, 2012

Artist Meg Hitchock (previously) has completed a number of new, elaborate collage works with letters cut from assorted books including the Koran and Salmon Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. The patience required to assemble these absolutely astounds me. If you’re unfamiliar with her work here’s a quote from her artist statement:

In my text drawings I deconstruct the word of God by cutting letters from sacred writings and rearranging them to form a passage from another holy book. I may cut letters from the Bible and reassemble them as a passage from the Koran, or use letters cut from the Torah to recreate an ancient Tantric text. The individual letters are glued to the paper in a continuous line of type, without spaces or punctuation, in order to discourage a literal reading of the text. By bringing together the sacred writings of diverse traditions, I create a visual tapestry of inspired writings, all pointing beyond specifics to the universal need for connection with something greater than oneself.

If you’d like to see some of these pieces up close, Hitchcock currently has work on view all over New York at ACA Galleries, BRIC Contemporary Art and Shick Art Gallery at Skidmore College.

Animation

A Hand-Painted Typographic Experiment by Tien-Min Liao

Handmade Type is a typographic experiment by designer Tien-Min Liao wherein shapes painted on her hands are transformed by gestures to create letterforms. However she gave herself a unique constraint: the painted figures on her hands for each individual letter had to be utilized for all variations of the letter, both upper and lowercase and sometimes even italic and handwritten. See more examples and the full alphabet over on Behance.

Design

Alphabet Topography

All images © Caspar Lam and YuJune Park, shared with permission

Created by Yale-graduates Caspar Lam and YuJune Park of Synoptic Office, Alphabet Topography is a physical examination of letterforms as it relates to usage frequency. Vowels and consonants like “R” and “T” were given more vertical prominence while lesser-used letters like “W” and “G” hardly make a blip. Of the creation process YuJune tells me:

I modelled the letters individually in Rhino and exported sections of each letter to AutoCad and based this alphabet on word frequency as defined by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, which interestingly enough, is almost identical to word frequency as defined by old linotype machines. I wanted a total variable of 6″ from the most often used to least often used letter, which gave each letter a height difference of .23 inches. I used architectural butter board and laser cut each letter in sections, and there was no client for this project—we developed it from a desire to explore the idea of language landscapes—visualizing language and the ebb and flow of spoken English.

I’ve always been an incredible sucker for physical typography and this project is no exception. (via it’s nice that)