Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Concrete Poetry: Place words on a grid so reading can start from any direction
- Type
- Set in Concrete Poetry's manner (One face at one size, emphasis from position and repetition only), and let Creacionismo's lettering (One plain face at several sizes, with the change of scale as the only expressive device) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Concrete Poetry's material (White paper and one black ink, quality carried by register and margin); bring in exactly one thing from Creacionismo (Black on white and nothing else: no rule, no colour, no image to fall back on).
- Colour
- Build on #f1eee5, #74716a, #151515 and admit one accent from #efe0ba, #97886c, #271d0d.
Where they fight
- Concrete Poetry and Creacionismo both belong to Experimental Typography, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- Concrete Poetry When making a shape comes first, the meaning of the words stops answering their position, and the piece is only letters poured into a picture.
- Creacionismo Scattering words for the look of it: here the position of every word is an assertion, and arbitrary placement leaves only a shape.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Concrete Poetry (layout, 1950s–1970s) and their accent from Creacionismo (layout, 1916–1930s). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Concrete Poetry exists for: print pieces where a few words carry the reading speed and the pauses, or exhibitions and wall works that take language itself as the subject. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Concrete Poetry - Repeated words - Shapes made of letters - Large blanks - Dismantled reading order Composition: Place words on a grid so reading can start from any direction. Type and lettering: One face at one size, emphasis from position and repetition only. ## Accent comes from Creacionismo, used sparingly - Letters arranged as shapes - Lines of verse recomposed visually - Type without ornament - The white ground used as a component Let one material quality come from it: Black on white and nothing else: no rule, no colour, no image to fall back on. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #f1eee5, carry the structure in #74716a and #151515, and let a single accent come from #97886c. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: rebellion, calm, play, futurity, technique. ## Where they fight - Concrete Poetry and Creacionismo both belong to Experimental Typography, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. ## What goes wrong - Concrete Poetry: When making a shape comes first, the meaning of the words stops answering their position, and the piece is only letters poured into a picture. - Creacionismo: Scattering words for the look of it: here the position of every word is an assertion, and arbitrary placement leaves only a shape. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Concrete Poetry 1950s–1970s / Layout / Experimental Typography
Treats the placement, repetition, blank space and sound of words as the poem itself, not only what they mean.
- Creacionismo 1916–1930s / Layout / Experimental Typography
A movement begun in Chile and carried through Paris, which declared that poetry does not copy nature but creates new facts. It produced visual poems in quantity, arranging letters as shapes and making the border between language and page a subject of experiment. With Ultraismo, one of the two pillars of the Spanish-language avant-garde.
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