Gui Borchert's Typography Portraits

Gui Borchert is a Brazilian artist who works as a creative director and graphic designer. He’s spent a lot of his life moving around in which he has lived in Brazil, New York and London however he currently living in Los Angeles. Borchert has created a lot of unique pieces of work that have earnt him to opportunity to create graphics for brands such as Adidas, Starbucks and Google.

When looking for inspiration for my work, I came across some typography portraits from Borchert that really interested me. For example the Barack Obama portrait from 2008 labelled ‘Words of Change’ contains over twenty thousand words that build up his face. The variations of words used in this image are words Obama himself used when running for Presidency therefore not only is there a historic picture of Obama but we are also able to see the things he said during his campaign inside the picture. What I really admire about typography portraits is how versatile they can be. For example another one of Borchert’s portraits contains a portrait of Jimi Hendrix built up of the lyrics from his cover of the popular American song ‘Hey Joe’. The use of song lyrics in a typography portrait is something I believe is very effective as the different words contain different meanings and feelings and then we actually link them to the artist. The black and white colour in this portrait is also something that is also very effective as black and white have connections to do with history and the past so it relates to Jimi Hendrix who died in 1970. The final example from Borchert’s work is the typography portrait of Ronaldo. As Borchert grew up in Brazil and he names football as one of his keen interests, it’s clear to see that he has used one of his heroes as inspiration for this which is something that I believe is vital with typography portraits as they can take a long period to create therefore working about one of your interests makes it much more enjoyable. The difference in this portrait compared to the two others is the strong use of colour which I believe has been kept to help us establish the colour of Brazil’s kit which contains the colour blue which has connotations of calmness and also the yellow colour which has connotations of happiness.­­­