Artigo:

The ongoing research proposes to examine contemporary experimental graphic productions that operate on the threshold between word and image, draw upon fluid forms whose identity fluctuate between the verbal and the pictorial or abstract. The research is interested, in particular, in shedding light on the graphic technologies used for the reproduction of type and for the production of printed artifacts, seeking to understand how they explore typography in its broad sense. In a first moment, the discussion regards, at the national level, the specific context of Poema/Processo in Brazilian Visual Poetry. Then, the discussion is made around recent productions of the Brazilian designers collective Laboratório Gráfico Desviante (São Paulo) and the productions compiled in Amalgam, a periodical publication edited by the Iranian Chicago-based designer Pouya Ahmadi. These sets will be taken as a starting point for the analysis of processes that affect the text in its strictly verbal identity - that which is articulated logically, discursively and linearly - in order to produce a more unstable relationship between type and visuality. The research will lead the debate from theoretical perspectives raised by Brazilian researchers Lucrécia D'Alessio Ferrara (1986), with the notions of "non-verbal text and reading" and "language without code," and Vera Lúcia Nojima (2016), with the concept of "hybrid design language," by the British researcher Barbara Brownie and the concept of "fluid letterforms"; and by the historical-critical parameters embraced by the curatorship of the exhibition History of Brazilian Visual Poetry (São Paulo, 2019). It is hoped that the research can contribute to the study and systematization of contemporary graphic productions of hybrid and/or experimental character, namely, on the border between the verbal and the pictorial, subsidizing the discussion around the characterization of the practices that underlie the fields of visual arts and graphic design.