Illustration Typography - Tash Gate

After viewing Joseph Churchward’s pod-cast I was most intrigued with the way in which he creates his typefaces through hand rendering. I then looked into Illustration typography of the modern day in which the typographers use illustration as a starting point to create their fonts like Joseph Churchward does. After further investigation I found that Illustration typography is quite popular in the present day and is coming into fashion so I found a reasonable amount of different artists who work in this manner.

This exploration then lead me to an article I found in Eye no. 75 vol. 19.

The article had examples of a range of different illustrative typographers of the present day and their work and techniques, and talks about the new trend for illustration typography. Job Wouters, who develops type through illustration says, ‘Brands are always on the look-out for what’s in fashion. Because illustrated typography has been hyped, it had brought me well paid commercial jobs, and the freedom to deepen my interests and take on cultural projects with limited budgets.’

Job Wouters

Another artist mentioned who works with illustration typography is Jessica Hische. Her work appeared much more computer generated then Job Wouters work, which is mainly just hand produced. Her process is different to Job Wouters, as she begins her process by drawing on the computer. She creates a basic skeleton of the typeface to begin with and then builds on that adding details until it’s perfected. Hische’s opinion on the current popularity of illustrative typography, is that people are interested in it because they are discontented with the ‘off-the-shelf’ digital options and furthers her opinion by saying that hand rendered fonts are more versatile with scaling and sizing.

 Jessica Hishe

Designers, Eriksson, Hische, Wouter and GrandArmy, Owens’ work appeared in the exhibition ‘Lubalin Now’, at the Herb Lubalin study Center of Design and Typography in New York. The exhibition brought together these designers working in this illustrative way. These artist’s are all influenced by hand rendered type which is in trend in modern day design, each working in different ways to create these unique, innovative type-faces.

Marcus Ericksson

Grand Army

Matt Owens

Richard Sarson is another designer influenced by this way of creating type. He says, ‘One of the reasons I like to draw is because the lines I draw are totally mine; I own them’

He had some interesting points of view on illustration typography and I was able to understand further these designers way of working. By creating these type-faces through hand rendering they automatically become more personal, because the form is created entirely by the designer. Working in this manner also gives you more freedom and the designs end up creating much more unique type-faces. Sarson says, ‘Why use type straight from the machine, why create work from someone else’s template?’

Richard Sarson

Sources:

http://jessicahische.bigcartel.com/product/matching-edition-full-set (Jessica Hische)

http://www.letman.com  (Job wouters)

http://ny.subdisc.com (Marcus Erickson)

http://www.volumeone.com (Matt Owens)

http://www.buamai.com/image/23089 (Richard Sarson)

Designers:

Job Wouters

Jessica Hische

Marcus Erickson

GrandArmy

Matt Owens

Richard Sarson