Inversion is a specific category of fusion, in which type and image fuse by exchanging roles. As with fusion, the relationship that takes place in inversion is similar to a chemical reaction with two substances bonding together. When type is portrayed as part of an image, or when an image is built from type, it captures our imagination and transports us beyond the potential communicative properties of type or image alone and into an elevated sense of discovery.

To reveal a potential or unrealized connection among elements and ideas.

To create harmony and integration among different or related texts by blending them into a visual union.

To generate visual or verbal puns, or both.

To invent fictional narratives between words and images, where words and letterforms become the characters.

To create the strongest possible connection between the word and the image.

Hyper-realism
The type is physically photographed or rendered through other hyper-realistic means.

Building Blocks
The letterforms appear within the picture plane as the building blocks from which the image is constructed.

Frames
The letters create frames for preexisting photographic images.

Whimsical illustrations of shoes are configured in an abstract hierarchical typographic arrangement that interweaves soft numerals, images, and bands of text. PROJECT Posters for Musica Viva CLIENT Musica Viva Munich, Germany DESIGN Günter Karl Bose, Berlin, Germany

Musica Viva organizes concerts of late twentieth- and early twenty-first century avant-garde music. The organization introduces young composers and performers and also features established experimental musicians in each concert series.

For Berlin-based designer Günter Karl Bose, creating a series of monthly posters for the concerts presents interesting challenges. Graphic symbols—photographs, illustrations, or geometric forms—are used to represent each specific series.

Bose senses, however, that the graphic elements are not a direct translation of the music: “Music has its own language; graphic design is a separate language....I try not to duplicate the music, but represent it in the language of graphic design.” With this in mind, he employs visual manifestations of rhythm, proportion, color, and form to visualize the essence of the musical performances.

Words are deconstructed into letters, and letters become unfamiliar representations of familiar things (the sailboats) in this poster by Heribert Birnbach. PROJECT Poster: Kieler Woche 2004 CLIENT Kieler Woche Poster Design Competition, Kiel, Germany DESIGNER/PHOTOGRAPHER Heribert Birnbach, Birnbach Design, Bonn, Germany

In Kieler Woche, submitted as an entry in an annual poster competition for a sailing event and summer festival on the Kiel Fjord in Germany, two-dimensional letters appear to skim across a full-bleed sapphire sea. A trail of backwash forms a V shape behind each character, making them resemble sailboats cutting through the surface of the water. The designer has executed this simple concept in perfect detail so that the illusion is never broken. There is an unanticipated shift in the viewer’s perception as the eye and mind are both challenged to move back and forth between reading words and seeing pictures.

In this poster for a seminar on design practices, a lettering template conveys all the necessary information. PROJECT Poster for Lutz Hackenberg Seminar CLIENT University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany DESIGNER/PHOTOGRAPHER Heribert Birnbach, Birnbach Design, Bonn, Germany

The information on this poster takes the form of a plastic lettering template. Because the letters are punched out of plastic, the counterforms fall away and the letters lose all but their structural detail, making the viewer even more conscious of their geometry. The poster is announcing a seminar on design and business; the template is a ready-made object that acts as a metaphorical reminder that there are tried-and-true, routine practices for designers to appropriate from the seminar.

Uwe Loesch’s poster for an exhibition of his own work contains a visual pun: does fliegen mean “flying” or “flies”? PROJECT Poster for exhibition:“....nur Fliegen ist schöner” (Only Flying Is More Beautiful) CLIENT Pan Kunstforum Niederrhein, Germany DESIGNER Uwe Loesch, Erkrath, Germany

This poster for an exhibition of Uwe Loesch’s own work challenges the viewer with multiple interpretations. Loesch’s unique approach to type and image was described very well by Dr. Jürgen Döring of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg: “The typographic elements in Uwe Loesch’s posters merit special attention. The observer is required to think for himself, to operate with the categories of perception and truth....There is a frequent use of signs and symbols which are endowed with new significance by an unusual context.”

In German, the word Fliegen means not only “flying” but “flies.” Loesch sets up a connection between the flies and the type by assigning them a uniform black color and distributing the type and the flies evenly across the surface. The resulting poster poses more questions than it answers: Is he comparing designing to flying when he says only flying is more beautiful? Is he making fun of the concept of beauty by using a swarm of flies as the image? Is he joking that his work attracts flies? Anything is possible.

Hitler’s moustache is substituted with a website address in this billboard exposing the potential of the Internet to facilitate propaganda. PROJECT Billboard for the open-air exhibition Irritations CLIENT City of Mönchengladbach, Germany DESIGNER Uwe Loesch, Erkrath, Germany

This billboard was designed to expose the use of the Internet by neo Nazis to disseminate propaganda (scheisse, “shit”). The central image—a Hitler with shaved head and a “mustache” created by the letters www—is loaded with associations that visually connect the Internet to neo-fascist activity.