"Typographic Snowflakes" Tutorial

Today vectortuts published a Quick Tip Tutorial by me: Quick Tip: Typographic Snowflakes. I will share some thoughts about the tutorial and concept here.
As you can read the tutorial completely on their website, I wanted to share some of the thought process behind it here.
Naturally the idea to do winter inspired artworks comes from it being the current season. I am not entirely sure how I thought of creating snowflakes from letters, but it was suddenly there and I really liked it!
There is something fascinating about snowflakes… they appear so random and regular, but when you take a closer look they are beautiful and every snowflake is entirely unique. They are one of those amzing things in nature that you just have to love.

… every snowflake is entirely unique.

So it happens that I also love Typography. And some circuit in my brain made "bizz" and born was the idea to create snowflakes from letters!
Here is an image of the tutorials final result:

In the end, what you can read in the tutorial is meant as inspiration. Playing around with letters and effects can lead to wonderfully abstract results. Experimenting is the key to progress and I know, that I have to experiment much more than I do.

Great things very often come from experiments that went wrong. You may not always get the result you were looking for, but hey, if it looks amazing, does it really matter?

Using letters or words to create an image is not a new concept. It started with ASCII and ANSI art as early or even earlier then the 80s. Due to a limitation of graphics in old computers, letters were used instead to create and image. Other examples of that art can also be created by using a traditional typewriter. Most famous examples of ASCII and ANSI are '80s arcade games.
With the a rising level of computer graphics and the introduction of programs such as Photoshop, the possibilites of using letters and words to create art rose to a new life. There are no limitations to what can be created from shapes like letters.
This is what I did here. I created a text-based image.
I used letters to create something new and visual from them. In this case snowflakes. Of course I did not only use letters to achieve the final outcome. The background is made from a gradient mesh and the small circular snowflakes are a custom vector brush. The main focus however is on letters. So I do consider this a piece of Typography.

This is what I did here. I created a text-based image.

The decision to put the snowflakes into an actual scenery, snowfall at a dark winter's night, is based on the fact that I believe simply creating a text composition is not enough. I could have put the snowflakes on a black background and called it a day. But in my opinion that working moral lacks vision. It takes a while until I am satisfied with an artwork. It is important to push yourself and your art to new levels constantly.

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Text-based Imagery – An article explaining the style and featuring a few examples from the genre.
P.S.: The piece actually is made up out of two words. Can you tell hat words?