Hand-Cut Paper Typography

While researching options and solutions for one of my projects, I came across images that really caught my attention. Cut paper is something we are all familiar with, but I never knew the possibility and the effect that it could have as an image, and more importantly a form of art itself. One of the artists that specializes in this particular style is Julene Harrison, who hand cuts everything with an xacto knife. We have it easy with our laser cutter, but she actually cuts out the individual shapes herself. One thing that she does that is different from the other artist that I will show you is that she incorporates the type into her imagery in a really playful way. You can just tell that she has a lot of fun doing this work, even though it may seem tedious. She has done work for Walmart, Nivea, the Wall Street Journal as well as the Washington Post. She also does personal commission work so anyone can have something made by her.

Another artist that deals with this medium is Annie Vought, who also creates hand-done pieces. Hers are more elaborate and complex. The type features no illustrations, and personally I don't think they need any since they are so large in scale. In an interview, she says that the lettering is hand-made because it adds more emotion and feeling to the pieces. The size of her work also plays a huge role (no pun intended) in the emotion and makes them almost intimidating. In the bottom image you can really feel this angry tone to it with the harsh scribbles and bold lettering submerged in the image. Though the material is paper-based, the images themselves are strong because the type connects to form a solid structure.

Julene Harrison

 Annie Vought

Work from her show, "You're A Bitch":

Again, delicately cut out white space from scribbles and hand-lettering.......

I encourage you to check out more of her work here:

 http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/05/new-cut-paper-correspondence-by-annie-vought/