Letters and words are very strong forms. Their simplicity allows them to be dramatically manipulated without fear of losing their identities. When a letter or word takes on pictorial qualities beyond those that define their form, they become images in their own right, and the potential for impact is enormous. words that are also pictures fuse several kinds of understanding together. As their meaning is assimilated through each perceptual filter - visual, emotional, intellectual - they assume the iconic stature of a symbol.

Transforming Words into Pictures

Type may be transformed into an image using a variety of approaches. Each provides a different avenue of exploration.

Pictorialization - When type becomes a representation of a real-word object, it has been pictorialized. It may interact with other real-world elements, like figures or environments or may exist independently of other images but look like a real-world object.

Pictorial Inclusion - Illustrative elements brought into the type forms so that they interact with the stroke or counterforms are said to be included. The type retains it's essential form, but the pictorial matter is integrated by reversing out of the type. Pictorial inclusion is n effective strategy when designers want to achieve the scale impact within a limited format.

Objectification - Creating type elements out of actual objects reverses the logic of pictorialization. Objectification allows words to possess the credibility of hard objects, thus taking on a solidity and symbolic power. The choice of material with which to make the type forms is profoundly significant. The same word formed in glass and then in mud will take on dramatically different meaning.

Ornamentation - Typographic elements may be transformed into images by adding ornamentation: borders, outlines, dots, dingbats, lines, geometric shapes, and much more. The ornament may be structurally related to the typography, or it may be purely decorative. If the ornaments have some kind of symbolic or representational quality, they may take on the aspect of an inclusion and therefore be more strongly connected to the meaning of the word. Additionally, the style of the ornament may affect the viewer's sense of the historical context of the type.

Like so many aspects of strong typographic design, making type into an image means defining a simple relationship between the intrinsic form of the letters and another visual idea. Below are examples of how designers manage to capture the intricacies found in merging text into image, and the results are stunning.