Sometimes it not about what you write, it’s about HOW you write it. Australian artist Gemma O’Brien knows best. Specializing in lettering, illustration, and installation, over the past 10 years, O’Brien has built a flourishing career around drawing letters.
Her bold type, expressive calligraphy, and detailed illustration can be seen in advertising campaigns, editorial publications and large-scale murals in galleries and interiors around the world. She has also collaborated with global brands and publications including Apple, Google, Adobe, and The New York Times.
“I know a lot of designers who think you need to have a style so that people know you for that, but I think that, especially within typography and lettering, the restraints of the alphabet are enough,” explained the artist in an interview with 99U Magazine. “I always wanted to show a different range of skills and styles within what I do, so that people were not pigeonholing me into one particular style.”
“Within the field of typography, you have such a diverse range of professions and people doing different things,” she added. “There’s a lot of type designers who are designing the fonts that we need to read efficiently. My work is more in this category of looking at words and thinking of them as art or bringing them into a picture as themselves. That can be to create a beautiful image or add new meaning to words – connecting people in a way that they might connect with illustration or art, as opposed to just the printed word.”
Check out some of her typography designs and murals in the gallery below.
