Lettering
Rather than setting type, these draw letters one at a time or build pictures out of characters, with tools ranging from a sign painter's brush to a terminal's character set.
Dictionary entry
- Calligram antiquity–modernism / Technique
Arranges words into the shape of what they say, so that reading and seeing happen in the same moment.
- ASCII Art 1960s– / Technique
Uses limited characters on a monospace grid as pixels, building image and tone from text alone.
- Copperplate Script 17th–18th century– / Style
The engraver's thin, fluent line produced the ideal of the written hand, and it settled into the letter of formality, of society and of certificates.
- Sign Painting 19th century– / Technique
A trade that paints commercial lettering with brush and paint straight onto buildings and windows, giving the street a lettering that carries the trace of a hand.
- ANSI Art (BBS Scene) 1985–1997 / Style
Login screens and group art packs drawn in the 16-color text mode of the BBS age. Block-character shading and inter-group competition made the summit of pre-web screen decoration.
- Teletext Art 1974–2012 / revival / Style
Screen art made inside broadcast text, a mosaic of 40 by 24 characters in eight fixed colors. The extreme abstraction of Ceefax weather maps and news pages is being revived now as a classic of constraint.
- Manga Lettering 1930s– / Style
In Japanese manga, sound effects and even the feel of silence are drawn as pictures, from a booming don to a hushed shiin. Hand-lettering turns the texture of a sound into line weight and shape, dissolving the border between image and word inside the panel.