Typography Portrait : Research

The art and technique of arranging type.

Typography is always surprising us with its various type of treatment and styles. Firstly, I wanted to know the different styles of typography that people had done so I can explore more and be experimental.

I divided them into 3 kinds; 2D typography, 3D typography and handmade typography.

 

  1. 2D Typography
    Starting from the basic 2D are clean and flat typography where there are several methods and mediums we can use to explore. The mediums used are more traditional such as pen, pencil and ink.Below is an example of hand-lettering done by Ged Palmer, a British designer who specialises in custom lettering.
    Typo - 2DBrush-lettering can also be used to experiment the different colours, flow and translucent effect it gives. Depending on the type of brush you use, you can get different results as shown in the example below by Drew Europeo.Typo - Brush LetteringA more intricate and tedious method is block-printing, something like linocut, where you need to carve the design out onto material like wood or linoleum, spread ink on it and press it onto paper. The example below is created by Derrick Castle, where he quoted;

    “The hand-crafted nature of block printing, with all its imperfections, gives each print so much character”

    Typo - Block PrintingAnother method is by using digital softwares like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. These ‘Text in Shapes’ is a technique where you arrange the type to form images or shapes. It depends on the treatment you applied such as colour, distortion, size and rotation.

    Typo - Text in Shapes

  2. 3D Typography
    This is something that we see a lot recently and it does not seem to die down either. 3D typography can be created using 3D editing software like Maya and Cinema 4D to create rendered shapes and make them look like real-life objects.Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator can also be used where it has a softer and artistic/illustrated look. Below are some examples done by Chris Labrooy and Peter Tarka.Typo - 3DTypo - 3DActually, perspective typography can be considered as 2D as it is drawn flat on paper. However, it appears 3D because of the perspective aspect that the artist has applied.Typo - Perspective
  3. Handmade Typography
    Food typography is one of the most common handmade typography where the artist used food objects to emphasise more on that type. They effectively draw people’s attention due to their vibrant colours and interesting character. People tend to have a closer look on these works to inspect more on every details.Typo - FoodEveryday objects can also be used to creatively apply on the types such as the work below done by Morfina Studio where yellow, red and orange-tipped pencils were used.Typo - ObjectLastly is a larger scale of typography which involves space and environment. These are usually seen as signages.Typo - EnviI was mentioning in class how the ‘Grow’ and Number signages might take time to grow out as they used plants to create the type and Joy highlighted to me that ‘Time’ can be an interesting subject to work on.I was intrigued by the ‘Time’ topic and chose to make more research on that. It would be interesting and meaningful if I can create something to show that we can speed up and slow down time to fit our needs (as if time is an illusion).