Framed Digital Word Art
Throughout our cultural existences we are surrounded by type. Whatever its purpose- whether advertising, in prose, newsprint or art- its indelible image is part of our mind’s collection of cultural stains. Framed digital typography uses the practice of turning type into original artwork, through the use of colour and font style. Often mixing type with photography and other imagery, the art brings cultural semiotics directly into contact with the imagined.
Leah Flores uses a font style that resembles that of the natural hand. The captions look like messages scrawled on a notepad and the use of landscape photography in the background gives each of her framed digital typography its own story. In Let’s Run Away- To The Sea, Flores has the word’s ‘let’s run away’ written over the top of the photograph of a beach view looking out towards the horizon of the ocean.
In Sven Pfrommer’s Framed digital typography there is a clear link between the type and the image it sits within. California Dreamin 1 sees the classic Hollywood image of palm trees lining Sunset Boulevard- several images of this overlapping each other in silhouetted pastel colours- with the type set within the image. The type spells out ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and is in the original font of the sign.
However, some examples of Framed digital typography don’t employ anything outside of typography at all, preferring instead to allow the type to be the art.