Word Art

After reading Lupton's Letter section and attending GRA 217 weekly lectures, I have gained a great deal of insight and a new type (pun intended) of appreciation for written characters. I never realized how much work and effort went into developing and refining a single typographic style. Now, even when I use simple word processing programs and see the list of possible fonts, I look at them much differently. Countless, dedicated individuals worked to perfect their own style, and give the common characters of language, well, character.

The truth is, we use letters to express ourselves, to make our thoughts known, essentially, to communicate, each and every day. We may not say to ourselves, 'I shall use this sans serif font because the words I wish to convey carry a great deal of weight themselves',

or 'As a tribute to all the time and energy this monk of the past spent creating each and every flourish of this font, I'll use Old English.' Instead, we probably utilize the most convenient and immediate method of type available to us and begin rap-tapping away. We have become almost desensitized or numb to lettering even though it pervades our world in nearly every communicative outlet.

Because of this sad truth, I really admire those who take letters that one step further. These individuals acknowledge the hidden significance inherently encoded in each character of typography. Thus, they express themselves by making words into works of art. This added dimension makes for some very cool pieces of design. I check the design blog Abduzeedo nearly every day to see what graphic designers have created, and quite often, the most interesting and thought-provoking pieces simply contain letters of the alphabet arranged in new and interesting ways. Instead of just using pictures, or just using words, they channel all of their design elements into an interesting and dynamic vision to create something like the examples above. Placement, perspective, contrast and color all work together to make words more than just words. This is why design is such a key element of communication media. They say a picture speaks a thousand words. So when we combine pictures AND words, we can actually express volumes.

What do you think? Can typography actually stand on it’s own as art?