Erin Smith {A Type of Awe}

I am not going to lie type lovers, I trawl the internet a lot. And I dont mean a lot, as in "I dabble in my lunch break, check my Facebook here or there" type of interwebz trawling. I mean that I check my top 5 blog/design websites every morning, afternoon and night- plus all the mindless (yet definitely fruitful) detours that are involved with that.

 So amongst these hours of scrawling through the design world (and the occasional Olsen picture here of there), I very rarely find myself doing double takes over peoples work. Dont get me wrong, I am all about love at first sight, but it is quite rare to come across a work that literally makes you stop and kind of make your mind explode. Just quietly.

Erin Smith is one of those designers. Today, whilst on one of my regular inspections of Australian INfront, I came across a beautiful illustration of triplet skulls. 

A sucker for anything skeletal and skull-related (I believe they mean good luck), I instantly pined over the image. Lovely....and now move along. But then my eyes skimmed over the caption "Intricate type-based illustration work by Brisbane based artist Erin Smith".

Type-Based?

Yes. All of Erin Smith's work, beautiful, detailed and somewhat morbid- is intricately made up of letters. As if replacing the presence of shading all together with a scattered alphabet, Smith's work captivates viewers on a completely new level. Although unsure whether Smith is providing an intellectual social commentary of the presence of communication within a visual image, to be honest, I don't really care. Her work is beautiful and arresting. The kind of work that makes you really wonder how they did it, how the hell they pulled it off and how long it took to draw those teeny tiny letters. 

Mind blowing? Most definitely. 

All images courtesy of erinsmith.com.au, all rights reserved to the artist.