«La escritura no es un instrumento de comunicación, sino una estructura de significación.»
— Roland Barthes, Le degré zéro de l’écriture (1953)
The Project
“Visual Grammar” is a visual and conceptual exploration in which typography ceases to be merely a means of communication and becomes the structural core of the work. Each piece emerges from a process in which the text, kept in its original language, undergoes a spatial reconfiguration that alters both its form and meaning. The letter is transformed into a constructive element—like a brick or a pixel—that shapes evocative structures, suggesting new ways of reading and experiencing the written word.
This project not only questions the relationship between form and content, but also invites the viewer to discover how typographic arrangement generates alternative readings, opening a dialogue between the visual, the linguistic, and the conceptual. Typography does not simply communicate—it builds, creating a new topography of text that reshapes the reading experience.
This project not only questions the relationship between form and content, but also invites the viewer to discover how typographic arrangement generates alternative readings, opening a dialogue between the visual, the linguistic, and the conceptual. Typography does not simply communicate—it builds, creating a new topography of text that reshapes the reading experience.
Concepto y Fundamentos
The work begins with an essential premise: language is malleable, architectural, and sonorous. In this study, text is not arranged in a traditional manner, but rather undergoes a process of reconstruction based on the evocative structure of visual form. In this way, each textual fragment acquires a new spatial and symbolic dimension.
In each case, typography undergoes a process of transformation that detaches it from its conventional arrangement, allowing the text to engage with form in a novel way. The visual structure does not represent the entirety of the work’s essence—it evokes it, leaving space for interpretation. Every word, every letter, is treated as a module, a fragment, an element that forms part of a larger composition, akin to a brick in an architectural construction.
In this process, typography not only communicates—it also builds. It rises as an architectural element that shapes the reading experience. Each letter becomes a constructive unit, an essential component that, when arranged in an evocative and seemingly random way, generates a new topography of text.
This arrangement not only reorganizes meaning but also redefines it, allowing the reader to uncover new readings and unexpected connections. The act of reading thus becomes an exercise in visual and conceptual exploration. Words are no longer confined to a linear syntax—they scatter, intertwine, and reorganize themselves according to a logic that, while it may appear random, follows an internal coherence unique to the created structure.
This approach enables each viewer to establish a unique path, a personal itinerary of meanings that emerges from the interaction between text, form, and perception. In this way, language becomes a moldable material—a flexible substance that adopts new configurations without losing its essence. The typographic exploration proposed here seeks to challenge the boundaries between design and literature, transforming reading into an experience where form and content intertwine in a play of evocation and discovery.
In this process, typography not only communicates—it also builds. It rises as an architectural element that shapes the reading experience. Each letter becomes a constructive unit, an essential component that, when arranged in an evocative and seemingly random way, generates a new topography of text.
This arrangement not only reorganizes meaning but also redefines it, allowing the reader to uncover new readings and unexpected connections. The act of reading thus becomes an exercise in visual and conceptual exploration. Words are no longer confined to a linear syntax—they scatter, intertwine, and reorganize themselves according to a logic that, while it may appear random, follows an internal coherence unique to the created structure.
This approach enables each viewer to establish a unique path, a personal itinerary of meanings that emerges from the interaction between text, form, and perception. In this way, language becomes a moldable material—a flexible substance that adopts new configurations without losing its essence. The typographic exploration proposed here seeks to challenge the boundaries between design and literature, transforming reading into an experience where form and content intertwine in a play of evocation and discovery.
Meaning and Form
In this study, text is not arranged in a traditional manner, but undergoes a process of reconstruction based on the evocative structure of visual form. In this way, each textual fragment acquires a new spatial and symbolic dimension.
Sonority and Visual Rhythm
By preserving the original language, the sound of the words influences the perception of the work. The musicality of the language is projected onto the image.
Spatial Reconfiguration
The arrangement of the text is not random but follows an evocative logic that dialogues with the content of the original work.
Creation Process
1
Selection of the Fragment
Each piece starts from a key excerpt of the original literary work, selecting passages with the greatest symbolic and conceptual weight. Preference is given to fragments that have a rhythmic structure or evocative images suitable for visual reinterpretation.
2
Decomposition and Structural Analysis
The text is analyzed into its minimal components: words, letters, and rhythm. Its distribution within the traditional textual space is studied, and patterns are identified that can serve as a basis for visual reconfiguration.
3
Typographic Reconfiguration
The text is analyzed into its minimal components: words, letters, and rhythm. Its distribution within the traditional textual space is studied, and patterns are identified that can serve as a basis for visual reconfiguration.
4
Exploration of Rhythm and Spatial Structure
Variations in size, weight, and typographic orientation are introduced to create tension, fluidity, or stability within the composition. The arrangement of typographic elements suggests a visual pathway that guides the viewer’s interpretation.
5
Refinement and Final Adjustment
The relationship between the transformed text and its original meaning is evaluated. Adjustments are made to the composition, seeking a balance between conceptual evocation and visual harmony. The final result is a work in which language becomes a plastic and dynamic entity.
Each piece presented here is a form of visual thinking.
It does not seek to illustrate, but to unfold a possibility. Typography ceases to be a sign and becomes matter, rhythm, space.
To read these works is to enter a zone of tension between what is said and what is evoked,
between the visible and the absent.
It does not seek to illustrate, but to unfold a possibility. Typography ceases to be a sign and becomes matter, rhythm, space.
To read these works is to enter a zone of tension between what is said and what is evoked,
between the visible and the absent.
Ahab’s Obsession
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Concept: Ahab is not chasing a whale: he is chasing his own limit. This piece visually reconfigures the captain’s inflamed discourse. Deep blue and infernal red create a vibration that evokes the sea and blood. The centrifugal spiral represents the growing obsession, while the phrases condense toward a white center that is never reached. The word "STUMP" — his amputated leg — appears as a visual anchor and symbol of loss.
Key Phrases:
"from hell's heart", "malicious agencies", "infernal strength", "incarnation of evil".
In the Mirror
El Aleph, Jorge Luis Borges
Concept: This work condenses the experience of simultaneity and totality in *The Aleph*. The concentric rings display fragments of the text which, when visually arranged, create the illusion that the reader sees "everything from all angles." The vibrant colors—green, orange, black—evoke vertigo and infinity. The design suggests a non-Euclidean dimension, a vision of totality as an abyss.
Key Phrases:
vi el universo", "desde todos los puntos", "en el Aleph", "una telaraña plateada".
The Color of Desire
Las medias de los flamencos, Horacio Quiroga
Concept: This piece explores the tension between beauty, desire, and punishment. Inspired by Quiroga’s tale, it reinterprets the vanity of the flamingos as a metaphor for fascination with appearance and the price of seduction.
The spiral composition embodies desire folding back on itself: it begins with the brightness of illusion and ends in the burn of excess.
Color acts as emotional narrative: white stands for innocence, pink for vanity, red for passion, and black for consequence.
Each layer spins within a cycle of attraction and loss —a dance that never ceases. The letters become living bodies caught between pleasure and punishment.
These phrases were selected for their symbolic tension between beauty and pain, transformation and retribution.
The piece translates Quiroga’s fable into a visual metaphor of desire that burns —a cycle where color consumes itself and movement becomes memory
Key Phrases:
“The flamingos were sad because they had no stockings,”, “They wanted red, pink, and white stockings like the snakes,”, “They wanted to be admired at the dance,”, “The snakes heard everything and plotted revenge,”, “They brought dazzling stockings made of living scales,”, “The flamingos put them on and danced happily,”, “Suddenly, the stockings began to burn like embers,”, “The snakes had taken their revenge,”, “They plunged their legs into the water to ease the fire,”, “And ever since, the flamingos keep their feet in the water,”, “The color of desire became punishment,”, “The stockings they wanted became their doom.”
der Fluss fließt
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
Concept: TThis work visualizes the river as a metaphor for consciousness — the flow that unites all opposites: life and death, joy and pain, silence and sound. The typographic structure follows the rhythm of a current: words undulate, dissolve, and merge, evoking the continuous passage of time and the impermanence of all forms.
Each layer of text acts like a current within the same stream, creating a dialogue between movement and stillness. The choice of yellow and grey reflects the duality between illumination and detachment — the space between understanding and surrender.
Key Phrases:
“Das Lernen und der Tod waren ein einziger Strom”, “Alles war Teil des Flusses”, “Das Schweigen enthielt alle Stimmen”, “Was ist, ist gut”, “Der Mensch sucht, verliert, kehrt zurück”, “Die Wahrheit kann man nicht lehren”.
TThese sentences were chosen for their cyclical and contemplative tone. They express the dissolution of the self in the totality of existence, where learning and death merge into the same movement — a flow that contains both stillness and eternity.
Each layer of text acts like a current within the same stream, creating a dialogue between movement and stillness. The choice of yellow and grey reflects the duality between illumination and detachment — the space between understanding and surrender.
TThese sentences were chosen for their cyclical and contemplative tone. They express the dissolution of the self in the totality of existence, where learning and death merge into the same movement — a flow that contains both stillness and eternity. Each layer of text acts like a current within the same stream, creating a dialogue between movement and stillness. The choice of yellow and grey reflects the duality between illumination and detachment — the space between understanding and surrender.
Le Parfum du Mot
Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire
Concept: This piece explores the tension between beauty and decay through typographic form. Inspired by The Flowers of Evil, the composition unfolds like a breathing flower —a structure exhaling both desire and corruption.
Text spirals outward from a dark green center, symbolizing the vital and poisonous seed of longing. The violet palette evokes perfume, skin, and twilight.
Each layer acts as an olfactory note: the bright surface of pleasure, the shadow of guilt, and the heavy base of time’s decay.
Key Phrases:
“I breathe the scent of time passing,” “The perfume of absent things fills the air,” “Evil is made of silk and light,” “The flowers of evil bloom in darkness,” “You bring forth pleasure from the depths of pain,” “Sounds and scents swirl in the evening air,” “There, all is order and beauty, luxury, calm and pleasure,” “Spleen is an endless perfume,” “You contain both heaven and hell in your eyes,” “I have found the perfume of nothingness.”
La machine de l’oubli
La herbe rouge, Boris Vian
Concept: This piece draws from Boris Vian’s Red Grass, where memory and oblivion become physical. The “machine of forgetting” is a metaphor for the impossibility of erasing what has been lived: the more one tries to clear the mind, the deeper the marks of memory become.
The typographic composition folds into tense diagonals, resembling circuits processing experience. Red dominates as a symbol of burning remembrance, while gray represents areas eroded by time.
Key Phrases:
“Laver l’âme les souvenirs s’accrochaient comme des griffes rouges sur le mur,” “La machine respirait comme un cœur,” “L’oubli ne guérit pas, il efface le silence avant la douleur,” “Chaque image se dissout avant de mourir,” “Le temps n’existait plus,” “Mémoire est une brûlure,” “Les mots ne voulaient plus dire.”
“Laver l’âme les souvenirs s’accrochaient comme des griffes rouges sur le mur,” “La machine respirait comme un cœur,” “L’oubli ne guérit pas, il efface le silence avant la douleur,” “Chaque image se dissout avant de mourir,” “Le temps n’existait plus,” “Mémoire est une brûlure,” “Les mots ne voulaient plus dire.”
“Laver l’âme les souvenirs s’accrochaient comme des griffes rouges sur le mur,” “La machine respirait comme un cœur,” “L’oubli ne guérit pas, il efface le silence avant la douleur,” “Chaque image se dissout avant de mourir,” “Le temps n’existait plus,” “Mémoire est une brûlure,” “Les mots ne voulaient plus dire.”
Gregors Kreis
Die Verwandlung, Franz Kafka
Concept: The composition stems from the transformation of Gregor Samsa as a visual metaphor for confinement, alienation, and the disintegration of the self. The text spirals, reflecting the vertigo and repetition of a trapped existence. The figure folds onto itself, like his body—distorted and secluded.
The phrases in German—the original language of the text—accentuate the sense of estrangement, reinforcing the disconnect between perception and expectation.
The visual progression simulates a descent through layers of darkness and sickly green, from the closed room to the unrecognizable body. This work does not seek to illustrate but to embody the metamorphosis typographically, revealing layers of meaning as language and form distort.
Key Phrases:
"Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte,", "fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.", "Er wollte sich doch bewegen.", "Die Tür war verschlossen.", "Er konnte nicht verstehen.", "Jetzt ist das Leben erst richtig losgegangen.", "Er fühlte sich eben an alles gewöhnt.", "Das Leben erschien ihm richtig.", "Er fühlte sich fast wohl.", "Sie hatte sich nicht mehr um ihn gekümmert.", "Es war dies eine Familie, die sich auflöste.", "Was ist mit mir geschehen?", "Er lag auf seinem Panzer-harten Rücken.", "Er konnte sich nicht rühren.", "Er war allein und ausgeschlossen."
L’Anima nel Fuoco
The Divine Comedy – Inferno, Dante Alighieri
Concept: This piece reinterprets Dante’s Inferno as an inner experience rather than a physical descent. The fall becomes an act of introspection —a journey toward the core of the soul, where language folds in on itself and fire becomes consciousness.
The central eye symbolizes the unreachable point of divine vision. The descending blue circle embodies the soul that persists within the inferno —a living spark amid the concentric rings of flame, guilt, and redemption.
The spiral structure and the gradients of red and yellow create a visual rhythm of combustion and purification. Each word vibrates on the edge of dissolution, as though the typography itself were made of incandescent matter.
Key Phrases:
“Nel mezzo del buio nacque la mia ombra,”, “Ogni passo ardeva,”, “Il dolore era misura e ordine,”, “Non vidi luce, ma silenzio,”, “L’anima gridava, ma non usciva,”, “Il fuoco cancellò il peccato,”, “Sotto ogni cerchio si piega il pensiero,”, “Ogni voce era una catena,”, “Il cuore del buio era visibile,”, “Il cerchio si chiude ma non finisce.”
The Fish
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
Concept: This piece explores the ambivalent bond between the fisherman and his prey, in a narrative where the sea becomes an existential stage. The concentric spiral arrangement refers both to the eye—as a symbol of inner vision—and to the whirlpool of emotions surrounding the struggle. The use of curves and contrasting colors (red, deep blue, and black) reflects the oscillation between love, violence, dignity, and destruction. The phrases distort into waves, intensifying the tension between human fragility and resilience. The image aims to be both intimate and monumental.
Key Phrases:
"Now is no time to think of what you do not have",
"You were born to be a fisherman",
"The fish is my brother",
"He can be destroyed but not defeated",
"I love you and respect you very much",
"May not be as strong as I think",
"Think of what you can do with what there is",
"It is not bad",
"I will kill you, fish",
"It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers"
de Trop
La Nausée, Jean-Paul Sartre
Concept: This work condenses Sartre’s existential core: the feeling of being “in excess” in the world. The spiral of text curls inward, reflecting the alienated consciousness that cannot integrate into the order of things. The words confront themselves, cancel out, and strain agains
Key Phrases:Je suis seul", "les choses sont de trop", "rien ne comprend".
Presentation and Exhibition Setup
A physical presentation is proposed through large-format transparent acrylic panels, intervened with direct UV printing or layered cut vinyl. Each piece is conceived as a stratified system of overlapping layers, generating a three-dimensional effect that transforms the text into volume, space, and depth.
Each work consists of 3 to 5 independent panels, with variable formats ranging from 70 × 100 cm to 120 × 180 cm, either suspended or mounted on frames with spacing between layers. This arrangement allows the viewer to move around and shift their perception, creating a dynamic interplay between frontal reading and lateral discovery.
Each work consists of 3 to 5 independent panels, with variable formats ranging from 70 × 100 cm to 120 × 180 cm, either suspended or mounted on frames with spacing between layers. This arrangement allows the viewer to move around and shift their perception, creating a dynamic interplay between frontal reading and lateral discovery.
This arrangement allows for:
To suggest movement, transparency, or displacement depending on the viewer’s perspective.
To reinforce the idea that meaning is neither flat nor immediate: it is constructed through the relationship between layers, planes, words, voids, and light.
To allow each word to visually project onto others, generating zones of tension and semantic overlap.
Additionally, the incorporation of directed lighting—whether overhead, lateral, or through backlighting—allows for the projection of moving shadows that enrich the reading experience. These shadows can act as an active element of the work: they shift with the viewer’s presence, alter the intensity of contrast, and expand the text into the surrounding space.
En algunos casos, se considera también el montaje suspendido en espacio abierto (aire/luz), lo cual potencia la percepción tridimensional del conjunto y genera una relación directa entre cuerpo, palabra y arquitectura.
En algunos casos, se considera también el montaje suspendido en espacio abierto (aire/luz), lo cual potencia la percepción tridimensional del conjunto y genera una relación directa entre cuerpo, palabra y arquitectura.
