Metaphoric type

Metaphoric type means using type to illustrate the word, phrase or prose being communicated. It can be a visual pun or an illustration.

We looked at the work of some graphic designers who produced examples of metaphoric type, including Alison Carmichael:

The first example, above, uses a cracked ice stylised font to symbolise the word cough - icy, cold, broken, rough. A cough is a difficult word to illustrate as typography, but she has communicated the essence of the word. In the second image, Carmichael writes the words Grow your Support in the shape of a moustache in a very hairy type.

I used Illustrator to create a flat colour illustration of Oranges and Apples. I chose a rounded font which I then expanded. I reshaped the letters to look as round as possible without loosing their legibility. I then supplemented the letter with a naive leaf and stalk, and dots to suggest skin on the oranges. I hand drew the word "the" with the pencil tool.

I then hand drew my interpretation of the word dyslexia. I wanted to communicate feelings of confusion, anger, frustration and helplessness that often affects dyslexia suffers. I used a brush pen for the muddled up letters and then drew dots of varying densities over the page, with darker areas around the dark areas of letters to look like destruction. The idea of making the dots denser at the bottom was to infer the weight of their disability that suffers of dyslexia may feel.