The Bee’s Knees: Pictures as Letters

Hello, and welcome to the Bee’s Knees, the weekly special here at Comic Booked where I take a look at some of the different ways people combine words and pictures. While I’ve already looked at several different ways that words and letters can be used to make pictures, this week I’m going to spin that around and look at ways people have used pictures to form letters.

We’ve all seen some of the more popular versions of this, such as the word “love” written with a heart for the O. But O is an easy letter to replace. Put anything you like there, and it would work. But what about some of the letters that aren’t so simple? This version of the word “knife,” by artist KayMayD on DeviantArt, is one good example of using a picture of a letter. A knife in the middle of the word, adding a sweet and unexpected illustration while hardly taking up any more space than would be needed.

Another example would be this one logo of Stampers Anonymous, which has a giant picture of a mouse in the middle which forms both Ms and adds an E to the end of “Anonymous.” Two creative letters for the price of one, though at the possible cost of making the picture itself less natural. Anyone could tell that it was designed to be a giant M–but still, you have to admit that it’s creative.

Still not impressed? To be honest, any letter of the alphabet can be replaced with a picture, and the pictures don’t even need to be photographed or drawn with the letter in mind. Just imagine the word “rains” placed after the following picture of a model brain by buyamag.com and you’ll understand.

Yes, the zombies are coming, and that’s the bee’s knees for this week! Please join me next Friday for another way people blend words and pictures to create all-new forms of art. In the meantime, feel free to tell me in the comments section if there’s something you know of I should write about. Do you have any other brilliant ideas of using pictures to form letters? Please share! The possibilities are endless!