Pixação: São Paulo Signature

*diagrams 4 to 6, p. 279
*diagram 2, p. 278
*diagram 4, p. 279
of basic and monumental capitals, incorporate, apparently,
di¤erent plastic characteristics derived from Fraktur, Runic,
and Etruscan * scripts. How did this filiation come to exist,
what path was taken by these specific forms of writing?
These various aesthetic borrowings from ancient Latin
written forms (practically unused at present), torn from
their historical context, do not occur in a conscious, scholarly
fashion, but indirectly, since most of the pixadores
evoke and lay claim to the influence of the ‘heavy metal’
record sleeves, and more specifically, the logos of the various
groups, which they attempt to reproduce, using basic
monolinear strokes *. The record sleeve, worldwide image
vector, together with the related stereotyped visual marketing,
with its strictly conforming codes, intended to represent
this musical cosmos, would appear to have led to the
actualization and transplantation of various typographic
‘materials’, i.e. the alternative di¤usion of long lost writing
models. A graphic analysis of these record sleeves e¤ectively
evidences a recurrence in the typographic use of modernized
and simplified Runic or Etruscan-type scriptural
aesthetics, together with frequent recourse to Fraktur-type
blackletters. A historic comparison of the di¤erent capital
letter structures evidences formal similitudes with certain
fairly rare typographic experiments of monolinear Fraktur *.
In addition, it would appear pertinent to link this particular
type of calligraphy, the pixações, with the ‘interrupted
script’ § category, i.e. handwriting where the tracing of each
letter corresponds to an interrupted construction, an alphabet
which could, with a little exaggeration, be termed ‘ultra
light condensed monoline blackletter’, to use the jargon
currently employed at international level in the classification
of typefaces.
What is to be noted here is the originality of this
pixação phenomenon, which, liberating the Runic and
Fraktur scripts from their use as rigid typographic forms
for record packaging, brings about their return to manual
use, in a hybrid form. The process usually observed in type
design consists in ‘freezing’ manual writing practices (calligraphy
or lettering) in set typographic forms, duplicatable
ad infinitum, i.e., prefabricated letters at the disposition of
all. We are here confronted with an inverse phenomenon,
where the desire to reproduce mimetically these fixed typographical
shapes, using di¤erent tools from those initially
employed, and their adaptation to a di¤erent context, gives
birth again to a manual, gestural practice, in other words,
to movement. The back and forth between calligraphy and
type design is nonetheless particularly evident in the blackletter
fonts, like Fraktur, where the relation with the manual
origin of the design is maintained and remains visually
particularly evident . The reproduction and adaptation of
these typographic logos using everyday tools, like the ballpoint
or the felt-tip pen on paper and with a paint roller
or spray can on a wall (‘poor’ drawing tools from the classic
calligraphy viewpoint), appear mainly as monolinear lines.
Our assumption is that this reappropriation facilitated
the emergence of an e¤ective urban environment alphabet.
This hybrid system is organized round a graphic notion
of economy of means, developing a maximum visual e¤ect,
based solely on the structure and skeleton of each letter.
‘One thing leads to another’ • : creation of a new universe,
this time in the lettering field, using existing shapes, actualized
by the hazard of identificatory fashions. It all happens
§
See the article establishing the
reflections of Gerrit Noordzij,
‘Broken Scripts and The Classification
of Typefaces’, Journal
of Typographic Research (Visible
Language), vol. iv, no. 3, 1970,
pp. 213–240. The author, in his
theory of writing, proposes a binary
classification system, discerning two
main categories of layout in the history
of writing: the drawn construction
of each sign being either continuous
(‘running hand’ or cursive),
or interrupted, i.e. performed with
several distinct strokes, with the
hand raised at linkage between the
di¤erent vertical stems composing
a glyph, thus ‘interrupting’ contact
of the pen with the writing medium.
He moreover makes no separation
between the study of calligraphic
shapes and that of typographic
shapes, practices apprehended
simultaneously as having the
overall shape of the letter as object:
‘A history of writing is a history of
shapes and not a history of meaning’
(take a look at ‘Upsetting The Table.
A Dialogue Between Nicolette Gray
and Gerrit Noordzij’ in LetterLetter.
An inconsistent collection of tentative
theories that do not claim any
other authority than that of common
sense, Hartley & Marks Publishers,
Vancouver, 2000, p. 48). By the
same author, read The Stroke of
The Pen: Fundamental Aspects
of Western Writing, Koninklijke
Academie van Beeldende Kunsten,
The Hague, 1982 and The Stroke:
Theory of Writing (English translation
by Peter Enneson), Hyphen
Press, 2005.
See Paul Shaw, ‘The Calligraphic
Tradition in Blackletter Type’,
Scripsit, no. 1 & 2, volume 22,
summer 1999.
•
See Bruno Munari, Da cosa nasce
cosa, Biblioteca di cultura moderna
849, Rome and Bari, Laterza, 1981,
5 th edition, 1992.
247