Type Style

This typographic tendency is intriguing. The type seems to have a life of it's own. It's more than just flat shapes on a page. It has character, life and a desire to draw you into a story or another part you weren't expecting to show. In Type Design: Radical Innovations and Experimentation by Teal Triggs, Marshall McLuhan (1911-80) coined the phrase 'the medium is the message.' This is certainly true of this style of type where the objects used in the type design communicate a particular mood or feeling according to what they are or what they're made of.

In the examples below, each typeface is made from different objects. Some are 3D objects photographed and then digitized, others are hand drawn objects scanned into the computer and used that way.
Experimental, unusual type like this seems to be a post-modern thing 'located within the territory of the avante-garde, operating outside dominant traditions' (Type Design, Triggs, 7). As far back as 1959 'Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs were experimental in the way words and language were deconstructed to create a fragmentary non-linear approach to the contemporary narrative form' (Type Design, Triggs, 7).

Today many artists and designers seem to be using this style of type design to their advantage in selling products, marketing events and generally drawing greater attention to image and text than ever before. Type is no longer just words on a page, it's become art in and of itself. Ads have become more rich and tactile involving the viewer in a much more dynamic way. Type that is made from the subject that is being communicated seems to have more impact than just using say Times New Roman. A good example is the Psoriasis ad below.

Objects both natural and mechanical seem to have really engaging properties.