Expressive Type

Typography in Motion: Expressing Emotion Through Type

This project explores how typography can convey emotion and meaning beyond words. By experimenting with shape, color, texture, and composition, a single word is transformed into a powerful visual expression of its mood. The creative process involves sketching, capturing original textures through photography, and refining the final composition digitally in Adobe Photoshop. The result is a design that treats type as both form and feeling, turning language into imagery that resonates with viewers on a sensory and emotional level.

Azza Alkendi

This expressive typography poster shows how I visualize anxiety when it takes over. I built the whole figure out of the word “ANXIETY,” repeating it, stretching it, and warping it until it feels chaotic and overwhelming, just like the emotion itself. The black-and-white contrast keeps it raw, and the distortion in the head and neck shows where I feel it the most. It’s basically me turning something internal into something you can actually see.

Layal Khawaja

In my Expressive Type project, I visualized the emotional intensity of anxiety by creating the figure of a man screaming using only words. Instead of relying on traditional illustration, the contours, shadows, and facial expression were all formed through layered and distorted typography. By allowing the words themselves to become the image, the piece shows that anxiety is not silent, it is built from internal dialogue, intrusive thoughts, and pressures that accumulate until they erupt. In this design I aim to transform language into emotion, making the viewer feel the weight of what cannot be seen but is constantly experienced.