Typographic Illustration

Adapted from Type Rules!: The Designer's Guide to Professional Typography, 3rd Edition (John Wiley & Sons)

By Ilene Strizver

Sometimes a design project cries out for a solution that either blends type with illustration, or creates an illustrative image with type in order to get a concept across in a strong, nonverbal way. This could mean incorporating type within an illustration, making typographic glyphs illustrative, or even creating patterns and photographic images with type. The use of typographic illustration and visual puns can be a clever, powerful, and useful tool for effective design.

This logo practically designed itself, according to Bob Aufuldish of Aufuldish & Warinner. “It was primarily a matter of finding the best question mark that could be flipped so it would read as an S. It turned out that the Caslon Italic question mark was perfect–we just rotated it so it was upright.” Courtesy of Aufuldish & Warinner.

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