Every designer has a love-hate relationship with type. Type is everywhere. So much so, that we barely notice the presence of its’design elements. This is why The Visual Dictionary is at the top of my Sources of Inspiration List.
I favorably call it Type Salad, a concoction of photographs of words found in signs, literature, advertising, tattoos, graffiti and everyday objects that we take for granted. Founded by Matthew King and a team of visual geniuses, this project began in February of 2006 and has since grown to over 7500 images of over 4000 words, as listed in their site description.
What’s super duper is that the catalogue is completely user-submitted with a nice selection of hand-written type treatments. The Visual Dictionary is certainly an unexpected way to look at words, so go ahead and take a peek. Helvetica is becoming redundant, plus I know you’ve been building that ransom note collection!