Type as Art

Typography is a powerful element in graphic design, where type is used in an artistic manner. Type is combined with negative space, graphic elements and pictures, forming relationships and dialog between words and images.
Color and size of type elements are important features in typography. Most typography will display type at large sizes, where the details of letter design are magnified. Color is used for its emotional effect in conveying the tone and nature of subject matter.
Graphic Design

Various methods are used to create and combine symbols, images and/or words to create a visual representation of ideas and messages.

Negative space, in art, is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image.

Robert Indiana and Typography

Words and numbers are important to Robert Indiana, too. He has turned them into a language of his own. He uses them to tell you what he's seen, what he's done, and what he thinks.
His artwork looks like road signs you might see along the highway. Sometimes they tell you about his life—the roads he's traveled and what's happened to him along the way. Sometimes they show what he enjoys, like poems and surprising stories. And sometimes they encourage us to do what he thinks we should—like "EAT" and "LOVE."

"Some people like to paint trees," he said. "I like to paint love. I find it more meaningful than painting trees."
Many people must agree with him.
Look closely at the envelope addressed to "You". Does the stamp look familiar?
In 1973, the U.S. Postal Service put Robert Indiana's design on the very first "LOVE" stamp. Over three hundred and twenty million of these stamps were printed. Mail trucks carried letters with this small "LOVE" sign on them along highways all across the country.
Every time a letter with this stamp on it was delivered, Robert Indiana's message was being spread a little further!



Hard-edge painting is characterized by large, simplified, usually geometric forms on an overall flat surface; precise, razor-sharp contours; and broad areas of bright, solid color that have been stained into un-primed canvas.
Art Vocabulary associated with Robert Indiana: Typography, Graphic Arts, Negative Space, Hard-edge painting


Vocabulary associated with our project: Value, Contrast, Thumbnail, Negative Space

What words and numbers are important in your life?

• Make two columns in your sketchbook. List special words on one side and special numbers on the other.
• For ideas, think about your favorite books, your birthday, your friends' names, and the number of people in your family.
• To make your design look more like a sign, use short words and numbers.
• Choose a Four-letter Word (a clean one, of course).
  

Plan your sign.

We will use a square format--a 5-inch plan in our sketchbook/a 10-inch plan for our final painting. We will use grays/black/and white.

Use a pencil in your 5"x5" thumbnail and work out the values...fill in the negative space to match your background values that were painted on the previous day.

My Example: