‘Comical’ by Michael Huppatz

Michael Huppatz is an artist based in Wollongong, an hour south of Sydney, Australia. When coming up with a concept for his word ‘Comical’, Michael worked through a few different ideas. His first thought of having the letters appear as some sort of tooth-filled, laughing Pac Man character as if envisioned by Robert Crumb was scrapped. His next idea was to have the crazy legs of the Ministry of Silly Walks forming the letters of the word, “but this ended up looking too… um, silly.”

For the finished word, Michael took ‘Comical’ literally and drew on his childhood love of cartoons and hid outlines of classic cartoon characters in the textural pattern within the letters. He chose a wide font so he could squeeze a lot of cartoon work in and was happy to include an image of Bugs Bunny within the mess of lines to tie in to his many year long obsession with rabbits in his art practice. He finished off the ‘Comical’ theme with a good old comic book speech bubble complete with a stylised swear. “And let’s face it, who doesn’t love a good swear?”

Go to Huppatz’s website to see some “grown man in a bunny-suit artworks.”

‘Comical’ by Michael Huppatz is one of the words that will be displayed at Type Tasting with the London Design Festival 2013 at the V&A.