ABCDEFridays: Tumblr's Amateur Type Graphics

With the help of the internet, we've become inundated with examples upon examples of graphic design and typography. The internet provides us with unlimited access to a completely free and virtually bottomless design reference library, meaning that you don't necessarily need to be a student at a design school to study it. It's also fairly easy for one to acquire Photoshop, along with Photoshop tutorials and do-it-yourself videos. These developments have led to a fascinating phenomenon: Non-designers are beginning to tackle type-driven graphics.

Like many young nerdy people, I have a little bit of a Tumblr addiction. I spend a good deal of my free computer time scrolling through the blogosphere. Initially I thought of surfing Tumblr as a way to detox after finishing up a long day of design work, as its content is mostly bad hipster photography and screengrabs, gifs, and fanart of TV shows and movies, rather than menu layouts, posters about homelessness or articles about grids. However, I've begun to notice that design is becoming more and more prevalent amid the nerding-out and fangirling.

I've included a few examples of type-based graphics I've come across on Tumblr. I dug a little into the original posters' blogs to make sure that, no, none of them are graphic designers or graphic design students. Obviously everybody making these graphics is interested in visual art in some capacity, or they wouldn't devote their time and thought to it. The majority of the people who made the graphics I'm posting are teenagers, between 15 and 17. That in and of itself is pretty interesting, because it means there are young people out there who are really paying attention. I've also got a musician, a historian and a few English majors thrown in there somewhere.