THEO AARTSMA

Theo Aartsma is a 27 year-old designer out of Northern Holland who spends most of his time working with flash and other interactive media. While his computer work has been highly publicized in publications such as Computer Arts and Digital Arts his typography is also becoming very highly recognized. His work balances illustration, design, and computer art and he spends much of his “free” time focusing on amazing 3-D typography work.

His typography work is very detailed and seems to me to have a very rich history in graffiti. While this is not verified on his or any other site his style and treatment of letters seems very influenced by the graffiti movement, with one exception. His work revolves very much around the juxtaposition of technology and nature and melding those two aspects into the detail of his lettering. All of his work seems very much inspired by the meaning or context of the word, which in turn determine the type of detail work that go into each letterform.

I would have to say that while his work seems to be doing the exact opposite of what our assigned project is it seems none-the-less to be very relevant. While our task is to create a world out of type he seems to create a world within his type; building his typographic characters of organic and mechanical forms. I just find his use of shapes and form used to create typography to be very fitting and can use, perhaps, his ideology and create a world of text within a world of text. Using the letters themselves to build up other letterforms as well as letters breaking down into other letterforms.

I have seen very much of trend going towards this type of typographic work and looking forward to seeing the next stage in the evolution of typography. It seems that the only place to go from here is to begin examining the letters for the inherent value that they seem to possess while combining with that the added cultural weight while simultaneously eradicating any meaning within the form itself and providing a new context to the language. In other words, break it down to build it back up.