Typography for Illustrators

I was introduced to Wayne White very young in age without ever knowing his face. I knew him from my enjoyment of such classic kid television shows like Pew Wee’s Playhouse, Shining Time Station, and Beakman’s World, all of which he did the set designs for.  This pass weekend circumstance finally revealed the face behind the worlds I enjoyed as a child. Wayne White was a guest speaker at the convention I attended this pass weekend in New York. There he talked about his life’s world thus far. Accompanied by his trusted banjo, he danced and sang his way through his life, and work. It was here that I was introduced to Wayne White fine art work, where he paints elaborate and beautiful landscapes, then paints big as the landscapes he has created, in white paint,  “SUGAR TITS” right in the middle of his beautiful landscape. Wayne White’s work repeats this method over and over again, for countless pages of his self-titled book I purchased after hearing him speak. While Wayne is not a graphic designer or typographer by far, he uses type in the way I that is illustrative and while composed. The type he uses in his artwork is both the subject as while of the work, as well as, an integrated element of the composition. He does this by rendering his giant type in one-point perspective to reinforce the dimensionality of the spaces his messages exist in.  Wayne also uses the elements of his vast country landscape to integrate type into his paintings.  For example, he will hide elements of his type behind trees, bushes, animals, and buildings. As Wayne’s work has progressed over the years, he has started to abstract his fonts and reconstructing them into illegible amalgamated letterforms. While Wayne’s work is not about the formal qualities of type and its presentation, I feel like as illustrators, we can take elements of how he uses type as an integrated element within his paintings, and apply it to our work as illustrators.