Type Tells Tales focuses on typography that is integral to the message or story it is expressing.
It will enthral designers and illustrators, wordsmiths and literati: anyone, in short, who loves the medium of the message..
This exciting, fresh take on typography goes far beyond the letter and word, exploding the boundaries of typographic expression.
There are examples of how typographic blocks, paragraphs, sentences and blurbs can be used to guide the eye through dense information.
Letters take the shape and form of other things, such as people, faces, animals, cars or planes.
Seeking out examples in the furthest reaches of graphic design, Steven Heller and Gail Anderson uncover work that reveals how Type can be used to render a particular voice or multiple conversations, how letters can be used in various shapes and sizes to create a kind of typographic pantomime, and how Type can become both content and illustration as in, for example Paul Rand’s ‘ROARRRRR’.
Precedents for contemporary work might be in Apollinaire’s calligram ‘Il pleut’ or Kurt Schwitters’ children’s picture book ‘The Scarecrow’, or in Concrete Poetry, Futurist ‘Words in Freedom’ or Dadaist collage.
It can be hand lettering, drawn with its own distinctive peculiarities that convey personality and mood.
This can be quite literal, for example when letters come from the mouth of a person or thing, as in a comics balloon.
And the narrator is the typographer.
This is Type that speaks – that is literally the voice of the narrator.
Type Tells Tales focuses on typography that is integral to the message or story it is expressing
