Type is Art, from Pieces and Parts

Type is Art: Parts of a Character is the brainchild of the folks at Silo Design, Inc. and JR Visuals, LLC. They call it a public interactive art project because visitors of this site are encouraged to use their imagination and create a piece of art using nothing more than the pieces and parts of 21 different characters. If you would like others to be able to see your masterpiece, you can save it to the Type is Art Gallery. Presently, there are 3,300+ works in their collection. Some get pretty clever. The monstrosity above is my own little creation. What do you think?

Kind of fun, easy to use and not a huge time investment. Also a good way for students to learn the anatomy of a letterform.

Hi-Fi Typography

Fast Asleep by Funki Porcini (released July 2002).

Obviously not new, but this album cover is new to me. Once you see the typography embedded in all that vintage recording equipment, you have to marvel at the craftsmanship. Could this really be a life-size constructed set (with tons of complex Photoshop work, of course)? However it was created, it’s pretty amazing.

I discovered the image today on iLT and dug a little deeper to try to find out something about the artist who created it. From the album’s liner notes: “The Uterus Goldmine modelled and designed by Openmind (132 layers and still counting).” Couldn’t find much else, so please let me know if you know more…

The Uterus Goldmine also refers to the name of the artist’s recording studio in Grimsby, U.K.

Favorite Kinematic Typography

Kinematic typography refers to the art and technique of expression with moving text.

My design colleagues have been sharing these short typographic films with me for months. Simply mesmerizing. Thanks everybody!

If you start digging, you’ll find hundreds more of these on YouTube. You could spend hours, so I’ve tried to narrow it down to a few of the better examples. Many utilize very similar techniques. Here are a handful that I never tire of watching. These in particular, pair typography with some of our favorite scenes from movies and TV shows. I believe these are student projects (I apologize but it’s really hard to find proper credits). Enjoy…

Ocean’s Eleven

Psycho

The Office (Benito Mussolini’s “War Statement” as interpreted by the incomparable Dwight Schrute)

The Big Lebowski (animated by Koos Dekker)

This Type Tastes Good

Best explanation of what “typography” is. This clever motion piece was created by students, Marcos “Boca” Ceravolo and Ryan Uhrich, for the 4 Motion Design class at the Vancouver Film School.

“Typography is what language looks like.” —Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type

“A good typographer is someone who communicates a point of view with skill and imagination, and makes the type taste good.” —Jeffrey Keedy

Words Are Pictures by Craig Ward

Recently I came across the work of London-based typographic designer/illustrator, Craig Ward.

I am especially intrigued by these bizarre and beautiful typeface experiments. So how did he create these — computer or by hand? It appears, a little of both. He mentions creating some of this work to promote a new software product called Bitfonter by Fontlab. Sounds interesting and I plan to look into it further. But as we all know, the computer does not create magic all by itself. It’s the human being behind the tool that makes this kind of intelligent and captivating artwork. Check out his site Words Are Pictures to see and learn more, including some really impressive letterpress illustrations.

Alphabet Soup

Student work from my most recent Typography and Layout class at Cuyahoga Community College, Western Campus. The objective was to select a nursery rhyme or fairy tale and illustrate a scene from it using only Garamond or Futura letterforms and punctuation. Inspired by Bembo’s Zoo.

Type City Cleveland

A collaboration between The Cleveland Institute of Art and Veer. Design students were to choose a location in Cleveland, choose a typeface from Veer that is appropriate for their location, and then render an image of their location using that typeface.

http://www.ramsaycreative.com/cia/2007-type-city-cleveland/index.html

Bembo’s Zoo

An abecedary of animals made entirely from Bembo letterforms and punctuation, by deVicq de Cumptich. Accompanies the popular children’s book, Bembo’s Zoo.

Flash site: http://www.bemboszoo.com/Bembo.swf