5 Typography Artists Worth Following
When expressed in artistic and inventive ways, typography moves away from being simply words arranged for print and becomes inspiring and exciting forms of design.
In this article, we look at 5 of the top famous typography artists and their work.
Christopher Wool
An American typography artist living and working in New York City, Christopher Wool uses a wide range of techniques and style in his works.
He is, however, best known in the typographic world for his striking, large-scale paintings of black-stencilled type on white canvas backgrounds.
These pieces often have phrases with the words abbreviated, disrupted and in grid format, making it slightly more difficult for the viewer to perceive and make sense of the piece as a whole.
Some are also rather enigmatic, one for example which simply says ‘The Harder You Look, The Harder You Look’. These paintings are the most iconic of his influential career and are instantly recognisable and highly popular.
More of his work can be viewed on his official website.
Learn more about Christopher Wool’s typography work
Christopher Wool — By Katherine Brinson
At the heart of Christopher Wool’s creative project, which spans three decades of highly focused practice, is the question of how a picture can be conceived, realised and experienced today. Engaging the complexities of painting as a medium, as well as the anxious rhythms of the urban environment and a wide range of cultural references, his agile, largely monochrome works propose an open-ended series of responses to this central problem.
Related Article: Colors and Typography
Craig Ward
This British-born typography artist and one of the most influential typography designers is extremely talented when it comes to creating attention-grabbing letterforms.
He uses an extensive range of media and equipment, generating stunning outcomes and effects. One of his most ambitious pieces is titled ‘You Blow Me Away’ which he collaborated with kinetic still-life photographer Jason Tozer to create.
With the type screen printed onto sheets of glass, they fired various objects through them and photographed the scenes at various stages. The results were both unique and incredible.
Ward is also well known for his piece titled ‘Bad Typography Is Everywhere’ which highlights in a visually clever way the fact that the world is so full of bad typography artwork that people often don’t notice the good.
You can view more of his work on his studio website.
Learn more about Craig Ward
Popular Lies About Graphic Design — By Craig Ward
Multi award-winning designer, typography designers and TED speaker, Craig Ward, presents his first self-authored book — Popular Lies About Graphic Design. An attempt to debunk the various misconceptions, half truths and, in some cases, outright lies which permeate the industry of design.
Stefan Sagmeister
Stefan Sagmeister, of design firm Sagmeister & Walsh, is a New York-based, Austrian graphic designer and famous typography designers who is very well known for his album cover design and has a reputation for producing really interesting and evocative typography art.
Typography features heavily in his work and he uses a broad range of approaches to achieve his designs.
Alongside his client-based work he conducts personally driven projects such as the ongoing ’20 Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far’ which includes his real-world typographic compositions named ‘Trying to Look Good Limits My Life’.
This consists of 5 separate pieces spelling out the words of the sentence using natural and industrial materials arranged in 5 different environments. This maxim is also applied to a leather belt with the words created using punched out holes that also serve as the belt holes.
This project represents the dilemma Sagmeister faces in his work whereby he always strives to be nice to people and loves to avoid conflict in life which somewhat relates to a fear of rejection. This, he feels, closes doors and limits what he does.
More of his work is featured on the firm’s website.
Learn More about Stefan Sagmeister
Things I have learned in my life so far — By Stefan Sagmeister
Stefan Sagmeister published Things I have learned in my life so far, a book born from a running list he keeps in his diary. With the support of his clients, Sagmeister began transforming these personal maxims into typographic artworks, which appeared on billboards, in magazines, and in public spaces all over the world. The result is an intriguing blend of personal revelation, visual audacity, and examination of the pursuit of happiness.
Related Article: Business Branding: Choosing A Typeface
Alex Trochut
Barcelona-based Trochut is renowned for his extremely intricate and detailed typographic design work.
Inspired by his Grandfather’s modular typographic and ornament system creation in the 40s, he has developed a unique and elegant style and worked for clients such as Nike and Coca-Cola.
One of his better-known personal typography print art projects is a series of designs titled: ‘Lorem Ipsum’. These all feature the words ‘Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet’ in tubular style strokes.
He makes use of objects which are of a tubular shape such as pens, pencils and squeezed liquids such as creams and sauces and intricately weaves and intertwines the strokes to create the complicated yet visually pleasing effects he achieves.
You can view more of the typography designers work on his website.
Learn more about famous Typography designers
The Typography Idea Book — By Steven Heller and Gail Anderson
This book serves as an introduction to the key elements of good typographic design. Broken into sections covering the fundamentals of typography, the book features inspiring works by acclaimed typographic designers from across the world. Each section illustrates technical points and encourages readers to try out new ideas of their own.
Wim Crouwel
Wim Crouwel is a Dutch graphic designer and one of the most famous typography designers for his typeface design called ‘New Alphabet’ which he created in 1967.
The typeface was designed in such a way to make it represent the limitations of the cathode ray tube technology used in early typesetting equipment.
This technology limited the process of recreating type and so the typeface Crouwel created is entirely made up of only straight lines, 45 degree and 90-degree angles.
This makes it fairly hard to read which was the main criticism from the design community at the time of its creation, however, it was designed with aesthetic and theory in mind and was never intended to be used as a functioning typeface due to its illegibility.
As a display typeface it is very impressive, especially on bold coloured backgrounds, and reading it provides you with an interesting challenge, which makes it somewhat interactive as well as attractive.
Learn More about Wim Crouwel
Wim Crouwel Modernist — By Frederike Huygen
Related Article: Logotype vs Logomark — What’s the Difference?
We hope you have enjoyed this article looking at these famous graphic artists of the 21st century and their work.
Feel free to leave a comment below with suggestions of other famous typographers and typography artists to check out!
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