Noted: Word as Image

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Story by Michelle Traub

Published on Oct 05, 2011 in Read

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I’ve long believed in the power of linguistic imagery, scavenging for evocative metaphors in back alley nooks, harvesting onomatopoeic stanzas in the meat drawer of my refrigerator. In Word as Image, Ji Lee pushes language even further into its pictorial potential. Lee writes:

“When we were children, letters were like fun toys. We played with them through our building blocks. We colored them in books. We danced and sang along with TV puppets while learning C was for ‘cookie.’ Soon, letters turned into words. Words turned into sentences. Sentences turned into thoughts. And along the way, we stopped playing with them and stopped marveling at A through Z.”

In Lee’s palm-sized volume, he creates images out of words, using only the letters contained within the world itself. Inspired by such a design challenge? Send your own words as images to submit@wordasimage.com.

Ji Lee

 

Ji Lee

Ji Lee

Ji Lee

How do you get creative with language?

Michelle Traub is an editor for Etsy.

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