The beauty of typographic portraits

What is typography?

Typography is the art of placing and arranging text according to the ambience or requirement. Use of typefaces is no longer restricted to just articles or media of similar kind. Typefaces are more like music notes. Each note strikes a tone to create a song. Typography in itself is a vast subject. There are many branches to typography. One such branch is portrait making (or otherwise known as text art). Previously, ASCII art was the previous form of typography art we see today.

When Leonardo da Vinci painted, he put his paint brush to his canvas and magic happened. Five hundred years later, nothing has changed. We are still using paint brushes and a canvas but this time its virtual and the magic happens on computers and graphic editing software like Photoshop or Illustrator.

A few examples

There are various ways and techniques to create a typographic portrait. A typographic portrait is not limited to just portraits of people. It can also be a social ad, credits of a movie, can be creatively used in music videos, and much more. In this article, I have tried and compiled some incredibly beautiful imaginations of artists along with some of my own work.

Rakta Charitra

Vivek Oberoi

Utada Hikaru

En Masse

With great humility

The Zebra Eye

Happiness

Steven Paul Jobs

White Hand

A Man of his Words

Mos Def

Typomin M

Big Ban London

Typographic Portrait

More than Just Words

Self Portrait

Am I your type?

Beer Directions

Jimi In Type

Thom Yorke

Typography Woman

I want to kill you

homme typo

Trust in you

Let us all dream together

The art of typography in video

These are just some of the many works of art that are out there. Hope they serve as a visual stimulus and here are some video tutorials to get you started.

Typophile Film Festival 5 Opening Titles from Brent Barson on Vimeo.

Behind the scenes with Dencii Manayak

His art makes you think that imagination does not have any boundaries. It is as free as the butterfly that spreads it wings and flies across the meadow. He puts his heart and soul into his work and becomes the piece. I have had the great opportunity to interview a young, upcoming and my favorite artist Dencii Manayak.

Dencii, thank you for talking to us at CreativityDen. We appreciate you taking time out for this interview. Please introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi. I’m Dencii Manayak from Parañaque, Philippines. I’m 27 and currently working as a part-time graphic artist at a local company making advertising materials and designing baby t-shirt prints.

How did you stumble upon this form of artist expression? Also, how did you get started?

Mahatma Gandhi

I’ve seen quite a few Typographic works before but I never really got into it until I took Typography 101 class when I was studying at Glendale Community College in Glendale, California in 2008. My professor at the time, as part of the subject course, made us watch the documentary Helvetica and interview a “Master Typographer” of our choice and then present the data gathered in class. I ended up interviewing Dr. Alessandro Segalini who was not only well-educated about Typography but was also very passionate about it. The most memorable thing he said to me during the interview was “Respect the letters and they will respect your feelings.” I guess since that experience I started to subconsciously look at the more classic typefaces in a deeper way. Things like how each single character was designed to work effectively individually and with other characters, how they withstood time since their creation and how they influenced other fonts, were characteristics I once overlooked in favor of grungy and heavily stylized fonts.

John Lennon

The first creation I did with my typographic style was a piece that served as my final project for the Typography 101 class. The challenge was to make a poster using only type characters whether it’s a creative way of writing the lyrics of your favorite song, poem, movie line or a quote. Me being more of the unimaginative illustrator than a creative typographer went for a portrait of John Lennon with the lyrics to his song “Imagine.” Honestly, the result was not the one I had in mind as what I originally planned was something more loose and generic but I was very satisfied with it. At the night of the presentation, I told my professor that it was a fluke to which she replied that I should never say that about any of my work especially to clients. So to see if I can do this challenge again, I made another one with Martin Luther King Jr.’s face in it. A lot of people enjoyed these compositions and encouraged me to keep doing it so I followed my works with versions of Mahatma Gandhi, Rick Astley (although it was more of a self-parody), Mother Teresa and a rework of MLK Jr.

As an artist, what influences your work? Or where does your inspiration come from?

I can’t say there’s a single person or event that inspired my style. I’ve seen an artist do the Mona Lisa by scraping burnt breads and another one smearing burger grease straight from the patty. I’ve seen awesome works made of ketchup and fries, cappuccino, Lego blocks, stamps, playing cards and so on. These feats, using objects that are not meant for visual art, have always left me in awe. A lot typographical works I’ve seen on the web has also showed me a fraction of the infinite possibilities of how far you can push yourself artistically using only letters.

Your style is very unique. Is there a specific font type that you prefer using over the others? What software(s) do you use to develop these projects?

Mother Teresa

When making these projects, I use Adobe Photoshop for cropping, converting to grayscale and adjusting the levels of the images. I then move to Adobe Illustrator to do the rest. I also use Winamp to keep me sane. As for the font, Bickham Script Pro all the way! I just love the anatomy, the natural curves, the structure and its flexibility to follow the shape of the human face. I just can’t imagine achieving the same effect using a different font. I learned to develop a connection with it. When I’m working on a project, I look at a part of the picture and it comes natural to me as to what letters or numbers are good to cover that area. And of course I want to give credit to the great photographers who took the great photos that I use for references. After all, they’re the ones who truly captured those moments. I just happen to be the guy who’s converting it to another medium.

How long does it take for you to complete a project?

Working on the first few projects took me a few nights as I was still trying to learn how to go through it. The last ones took me about 2-3 nights as I became more familiar with it.

Is there a message you would like to give our readers/artist who would like to explore this type of art?

In the end it was all about practice, practice and more practice. Perseverance is as valuable as creativeness. I know I’m a very flawed artist but I just make the most out of what I have and work around those flaws. I strive to share with other artists and compete more against myself, not the other way around. I guess that’s basically it. Thanks for appreciating my art.

Check out more of Dencii’s work

Summary

In conclusion, letters are no longer used just to create words and words no longer just create sentences. Artist expressions have transcended these boundaries and set a new milestone in the world of art. This is my attempt at giving you a little peek into the boundless world of Typography. So, let your imaginations loose and get creatin’.

  

Written by Trupti

Trupti is an aspiring web designer. Loves meeting new people from all walks of life and enjoys reading books.