Typographic Charles Dickens

Artist Juan Osborne spins “you are what you eat” into “you are what you write” in his typographic portrait of Charles Dickens. Osborne counted the words from 50 Dickens books, including Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, and then used the most frequent to create his portrait. Below are Dickens’ most commonly used words, according to Osborne:

“oliver (868), upon (755), replied (548), bumble (399), gentleman (366), lady (359), sikes (357), dear (330), jew (325), fagin (317), sir (314), away (298), another (275), without (253), woman (229), poor (204), window (202), shall (192), heart (185), quite (181), child (177), arm (172), brownlow (167), something (166), returned (164), doctor (161), master (161), manner (160), whether (156), moment (153), observed (152), seen (150), london (149), sat (149), indeed (147), present (147), office (145), rather (145), bill (144), speak (143), expression (139)”

See Osborne’s other typographic portraits of famous figures here.

ht Design Taxi

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–Benjamin Samuel is the co-editor of Electric Literature. He uses words to paint himself into a corner on Twitter.