New York-based designer Ji Lee started creating calligrams 20 years ago in his typography class at art school. What started as an assignment turned into a lifelong hobby and Lee’s passion for typography has led him to create over a 100 calligrams so far.
The challenge, says Lee, is to visualize the meaning of a word, using only the graphic elements of the letters forming the word. It’s not easy but the reward of ‘cracking’ a word keeps him going. Lee’s work has been featured in leading publications and he’s even published a book titled Word as Image. Check out some of his calligrams below.

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