Breathtaking Typographic Posters
You can’t design without type. However, yon can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs. In fact, many graphic designers and artists take exactly this route to communicate their ideas through their works. The results are sometimes crazy, sometimes artsy, sometimes beautiful, but often just different from things we’re used to. Thus designers explore new horizons and we explore new viewing perspectives which is what inspiration is all about.
You can’t design without type: this is an argument for it.
This post showcases over 50 breathtaking typographic posters designed by artists across the globe. We feature Oriental, Iranian, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese and Russian typographic posters as well as a number of further references. This isn’t a “best of”, there is no ranking and the collection isn’t supposed to be complete; it’s rather subjective and quite random. All screenshots are clickable; however, links not always lead directly to the corresponding image (e.g. it’s impossible in Flash-based sites) — sometimes you’ll need to search for it.
You may also want to take a look at the article Typography In Motion we’ve published few months ago.
So what can be achieved out of simple letters and symbols? Please be patient, some screenshots are huge.
Breathtaking Typographic Posters
Christina Koehn / University of Washington, USA
Alex Banks / United Kingdom
Emiliano Lionel Suárez / Argentina
Juanma Teixidó / Asunción, Paraguay
Emil Kozak / Spain
Pablo Alfieri / Buenos Aires, Argentina
HeyHo / France
Vincent Bousserez / Paris, France
Drew Kora / Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA
Aron Jancso / Budapest, Hungary
Andre Bergamin / Brazil
Oh Ishi / Siam, Thailand
Alejandro Paul / Buenos Aires, Argentina
mrgraphicsguy / Germany
lee25 / United Kingdom
Shaun Morrison / Brighton, England
25ah / Stockholm, Sweden
Andy Cambiaso / Argentina
Puerto Baires / Buenos Aires, Argentina
Todd Roeth / USA
Piotr Fedorczyk / Florence, Italy
Noel Tanner / Minneapolis, USA
Kate Andrews / London, United Kingdom
Experimental Jetset / Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Lennart Wolfert / Netherlands
Farhad Fozuni / Iran
Yaronimus Maximus / Israel
Bunch / UK
Playful applications for the 55DSL 2007 Christmas instore incentive. Tape and posters were designed and sent to each store where the staff were then encouraged to get creative with what they taped up to win 555 GBP worth of prizes.
Alex Trochut / Spain
Arjo Wiggins Poster
Pixelgarten / Germany
Apirat Infahsaeng / New York
Poster announcing Brian Collins’ lecture Design Changes Everything.
MAISON DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE Création de la nouvelle identité visuelle.
Projet non retenu.
Purple Haze / Germany
Rote Sonne Club (2007). Poster design for a clubnight.
Think Experimental / France
Aaron Pou / USA
Maxime Delporte / France
Job Wouters / Netherlands
In collaboration with Roel Wouters. Printed by Knust.
Folded A3 flyers for Jungstar (formaly known as Zeitgeist) a bimonthly party held at the sugarfactory organised by the MRKMLN-group.
There’s always work in progress / you’re always a work in progress.
Sterk Water / Belgium
Poster made for a expo of a local art school promoting the free grahics and the sculpturing department.
C100 / Germany
A Club Poster from Berlin
Mark Andrew Webber / Falmouth, England
Hanna Czapka / Germany
Bonus
Job Woulters
80 of 500 handdrawn typographic posters by Job Wouters are shown in a 3 minute filmclip by Roel Wouters. The posters promote the students final works at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. The handwriting is… beautiful.
References and Resources
- Oriental Typography Posters
By Malik Anas.
- Iranian Typography Now
- Chinese Typography Pool
- DailyType.ru
A creative project run by several russian type designers. Day by day, they create original typefaces and post their results along with routine.
- Hebrew Typography
Oded Ezer.
- Hebrew Type Flickr Pool
The showcase of Hebrew Typography.
- Japanese Typography Flickr Pool
- Pingmag Typography section
- Best 100 Posters from 2006
- The Pleasures Of The Text Flickr Pool
- We Love Typography Behance Circle
- What is graphic design? Poster Competition: Winners of the competition
- Typotecture: Typography as Architectural Imagery
- In Love With Typography Deviant Reports
Regularly collected by Stefano Picco. - Helvetica Now Poster Contest
- 100 Best Posters
- hands on the poster – a photoset on Flickr
duneska
April 8th, 2010 3:58 pmThis place is Hot. Me prende.. Well done! & thanks..
minha baramy
April 10th, 2010 9:04 amall of them were simply amazing.thankyou.good job buddy!!!
Elie
April 23rd, 2010 5:06 amFantastic :)
evelina
May 27th, 2010 12:20 pmamazing stuff! does anyone know how to create a letter like in Piotr Fedorczyk’s poster? Im struggling to find any similar tutorial… Thanks
shekhar
June 28th, 2010 12:26 amVery nice.
Bharat Prajapati
July 5th, 2010 10:44 pmReally Nice….
ElMotaheda Web
August 15th, 2010 2:48 amGood job! Good collection, Excellent work
paola lozano
September 30th, 2010 7:04 amyeiii! i really enjoyed this collection, I’ll recommend this post on my blog.
Adam Walker
October 8th, 2010 7:10 amSome amazing stuff here, great post. Just started playing around with type design, I’ve recently finished this Sherlock Holmes inspired typography poster…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/renduh_maw/5055437354/in/set-72157624240380460/
I’d love to hear what you think.
Ven Francis
October 12th, 2010 8:05 amreally inspiring post.
Jen
October 22nd, 2010 1:13 pmCheck out this guy, he makes portraits out of type. Very complex work. http://www.eugenelvovsky.com/typeis
avn
February 10th, 2011 2:37 amnice collection :) thanks for sharing
luisa fernanda
February 14th, 2011 3:56 pmHasta ahora conosco el mundo de la tipografía, me encanta tu trabajo y me encanta todo lo que se puede hacer con una simple letra… soy colombiana, estudiante de diseño gráfico, me gusta tu estilo y me gustaría hacerme un tatuaje con mi nombre, como quedaría el nombre de Luisa, en tu estilo???… nice very nice…¡¡¡ bye.
Luisa
February 23rd, 2011 2:17 pmReally nice pieces! Got a lot of inspiration here! Thanks!
James Random
May 18th, 2011 6:58 amThe notion that you can’t design without type is incorrect.
Abercio
August 8th, 2011 4:17 pmVERY GOODDD…..
Purva Sawant
September 19th, 2011 11:23 pmamazing posters, want to see more of these!
love the french film festival poster and the 3rd poster from Argentina! :)
layar
October 14th, 2011 7:47 amHi guys…Dare to try something different? Can grab this free new font here if you like.
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/layarbahtera/layar-bahtera/
Dennis Doyle
February 24th, 2012 12:08 amThanks for the display. There were some wonderful ideas here, although several seemed rather cluttered. There are some creative people at work here.
Kerrie
April 1st, 2012 11:39 pmAppreciate it for sharing this well put together web site.