ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL CASAZUL

A tipografia como meio nuclear de comunicação

de uma identidade.

Nuno Duarte Martins, Jorge Martins and João Morgado

 

No presente artigo apresentamos o projeto BLU, uma família tipográfica desenvolvida especificamente para a identidade da Associação Cultural Casazul, em Barcelos.

 

Este trabalho surgiu em contexto académico, no curso de Design Gráfico, do Instituto Politécnico do Cavado e do Ave. Depois de uma primeira parte de investigação e de formulação de hipóteses para a identidade da Casazul, propôs-se o desenvolvimento de uma família tipográfica para ser aplicada na própria Marca (logótipo) e em todo o sistema de comunicação, nomeadamente: na sinalética; na animação e decoração gráfica do espaço; e no design promocional.

 

Neste projeto, para além de a tipografia ter sido o ponto de partida na construção de toda a imagem, foi, sobretudo, o elemento dominante e condutor de todo a linha de identidade e de comunicação desta associação. Com esta proposta tipográfica procurou-se contribuir para a promoção do espaço, que se centra na cultura, na criatividade e na experimentação.

 

Descrever-se-á o processo de conceptualização e de construção da tipografia; as metodologias adotadas; e os resultados obtidos.

 

 

EL DON DE LA UBICUIDAD MORFOLÓGICA

DEL MODELO CLÁSICO

María Pérez Mena

 

Corresponsales de la palabra en el medio gráfico, las letras muestran el reflejo de la evolución cultural de las civilizaciones. A pesar del devenir tecnológico, estilístico y social que marca el paso de las épocas, la Capital Romana —representada por su perfección en la columna trajana— apenas ha sufrido, sin embargo, variaciones en el tiempo. Así, nuestras mayúsculas, que son su herencia directa, mantienen y comparten los principios básicos en los que se postula este carácter.

 

Empleada principalmente en inscripciones de monumentos erguidos en nombre de la conmemoración y la divulgación imperial, su poderosa influencia se expresa en la esencia estructural de las tipografías de todos los tiempos. Dicha esencia ha sido grabada en el subconsciente del lector, el cual queda perturbado en caso de que esta forma básica se distancie en cierta medida de lo que el ojo ha aprehendido. Así, la Capital Romana, por su presencia perenne en los alfabetos de la civilización occidental, se alza como símbolo de la ubicuidad en el tiempo y el espacio.

 

Este estudio entiende y observa la omnipresencia morfológica del modelo clásico a partir de la armonía de su proporción y el ritmo acompasado que conforman sus trazos, que proceden de la naturalidad del trazo de la pluma. Sus bases asentadas en las leyes naturales, no geométricas, son determinantes en la consecución de una experiencia lectora satisfactoria y el resultado se alza como paradigma de la legibilidad. La observación detenida de estas cuestiones supone una de las mejores lecciones de cultura visual, y después de casi dos mil años, se siguen manteniendo como modelo de los principios básicos que conforman los signos tipográficos que usamos cotidianamente.

 

La universalidad de la Capital Romana le ha hecho valedora de las alabanzas de calígrafos, tipógrafos y estudiosos más relevantes de la historia pasada y reciente. Así, ante la facilidad de su lectura, procedente de las relaciones armónicas de sus trazos, y la perfección de su factura, el calígrafo Edward Johnston ya aconsejaba: «En caso de duda, utilice Capital Romana».

 

 

THE TYPESETTING OF PESSOA’S

THE TRANSFORMATION BOOK

Alessandro Segalini

 

In this paper I will present the typesetting of Contra Mundum Press’s world premiere edition of Pessoa’s The Transformation Book, a multi-lingual and complex text with: over a thousand handcrafted footnotes, transcription symbols, hundreds of headings in different but consistent styles, taxonomies & markups at the service of the workflow, etc. I will outline the typographic work — the “scaffolding” for the texts that when removed makes the typography almost invisible to the reader who is then free to spend mental energy to process the content alone & enjoy reading at once. “It is almost impossible to look and read at the same time” — this quote by Gerard Unger is relevant to the activity presented. It’s a discourse on typesetting performance and methods, just like fonts are performative tools, and it will explore specs, art, and aesthetics, too. What is presented is a physical book in the end, and special attention was given to the design of facing pages and the related text flow. As for the content, The Transformation Book — or Book of Tasks contains series of fragments written in English, Portuguese, and French. CMP believes that typography is situated at the intersection of language, culture, technology and aesthetics.Through the critical efforts of the editors, a fundamental project of Fernando Pessoa’s is now brought from the confines of the archive to the public in its most complete and accurate typographic shape. Alexander Search, Pantaleão, Jean Seul de Méluret, and Charles James Search are the four “pre-heteronyms” to which the texts of The Transformation Book are attributed. Conceived by Pessoa in 1908, a year of great social and cultural transformation in Portugal, The Transformation Book was planned & written to reflect and advance social and cultural transformation in Portugal and beyond. Moving between a number of literary forms, all enhanced through crafted typesetting — poetry, fiction, and satire as well as essays on politics, philosophy, and psychiatry — The Transformation Book marks one of the fundamental stages in Pessoa’s elaboration of a new conception of literary space, one that he came to express as a “drama in people,” a space here rendered typographically with great attention to details.

 

 

TYPOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF BRAZILIAN

INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES

Rafael Dietzsch

 

This article presents an analysis of the typographic characteristics of Brazilian indigenous languages, with a specific focus on the orthographies established with the use of the Latin script for these originally unwritten languages. The main purpose of this work is to examine, from a typographic perspective, the technical conditions within which these orthographies were created, as well as the problems related to text composition and the use of diacritics in these languages.

 

Some of these orthographies employ accented letters that are rare in most of the fonts for the Latin script, while others make use of precomposed glyphs that are not encoded in Unicode. The absence of these special characters in most digital fonts result in many typographic inconsistencies which could be avoided with the use of appropriate technology.

 

The analysis focuses on the publications found during the research for this work. These are mostly educational primers and literary books in native languages and, sometimes, bilingual editions containing texts in Portuguese. It was a particular challenge to find printed material showing text paragraphs in native languages other than this type of educational material as the widespread development of publications typeset entirely in these languages is a relatively recent phenomenon.