Interaction Design · Project 1 of 3 · Weeks 1–5
Typography Project 4: Order and Harmony
Concrete poetry — type as rhythm, motion, and emotional form
FORMAT
Individual
WEEKS
13-15
METHODS
Song selection and lyric analysis · Concrete poem composition · Experimental typography · Spatial and sequential arrangement · Adobe Illustrator or InDesign · Three-panel series · Critique
TAGS
Aesthetic Psychology, Design Education, Design Thinking
Why this project
This project concludes the course because it relies on all previous learning. Students who grasp letterform anatomy, have experience designing typefaces, can manipulate type to convey meaning, and can organize type within nine grid systems come here equipped with the formal vocabulary needed for truly experimental work. 'Order and Harmony' is not an introductory assignment; it represents the culmination of everything the course has aimed to develop.
The tradition of concrete poetry — from Eugen Gomringer's visual poems of the 1950s to the Brazilian Noigandres group, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and the broader international movement of the 1960s — perceives the poem as both a visual and sonic entity. The way words are arranged on a page, including their size, weight, and spacing, conveys meaning beyond the words themselves. This idea aligns with experimental typography's long-standing view: that form itself holds meaning, not just serving as a vessel for content.
The Futurists recognized this idea. Marinetti's words-in-freedom manipulated type to evoke sensations—speed, noise, and simultaneity—in both the reader's body and mind. El Lissitzky's typographic works viewed the page as a visual landscape, with text elements moving through space. These examples serve as the roots of this project. After fifteen weeks of learning to master typographic control, students are now challenged to create work that appears uncontrolled—using technical precision to achieve an impression of freedom.
Students select their own songs, and this freedom—after a semester of assigned work—leads to some of the most personally meaningful projects of the year. The text is distilled into a word or phrase, encouraging the same simplification required in Project 2. However, here, the formal response is expressive and tactile rather than purely definitional. The type should resonate with the feel of the song.
The Brief
PROJECT PROMPT
Select a song and extract from its lyrics a significant word, group of words, or short phrase. Using that reduced piece of text, create three concrete poems.
The first — graphic — visually conveys an experience, idea, or emotion inspired by the song through the spatial arrangement of letterforms on an 8½"×11" page. It is simultaneous and non-linear: the eye does not follow a single reading path.
The second — rhythmic/kinetic — visually portrays the song's rhythmic and movement experience through a sequential, linear arrangement on half of an 11"×17" page.
The third — melodic/phonetic — visually portrays the song's melodic and musical experience through a sequential, linear arrangement on the other half of an 11"×17" page.
Use any number of typefaces, styles, and sizes. Color may be used with discretion. The letterforms are the only material. The song is the brief.
DELIVERABLE
Song selection and lyric extract — submitted with rationale before design begins
Concrete graphic poem: 8½"×11", portrait or landscape, spatial and non-linear
Concrete rhythmic poem: half of 11"×17" page, sequential and linear
Concrete melodic/phonetic poem: other half of 11"×17" page, sequential and linear
Digital files: JPEG or PDF, print quality
All three pieces printed for critique — may be printed on 11"×17" with crop marks
Self-assessment — see separate assignment sheet
What I've learned from running this
This project reveals to students the surprising versatility of typography. After fifteen weeks of learning to control type—adjusting kerning, leading, alignment, and hierarchy—students realize they can also use that mastery to create designs that seem intentionally disorderly. Whether with text flowing across the page in a rhythmic poem or clustering and dispersing in a graphic poem, the work remains as meticulously controlled as the grid-based projects in Project 3. The key difference is that this control aims to evoke sensation rather than just ensure legibility.
The selection of a song is more important than students initially realize. When students pick songs they truly love—songs they know intimately and that evoke a physical response—they tend to produce more precise and detailed work related to the form. The text must be felt emotionally before it can be shaped into a physical form. This isn't a mystical idea but a formal one. Students who connect physically and emotionally with the music make more deliberate choices about scale, weight, and placement than those working purely abstractly.
The three-panel structure produces a useful formal comparison. Students whose three poems feel like three versions of the same composition have not yet differentiated the graphic, rhythmic, and melodic experiences. Students whose three panels feel distinctly different from each other — where the non-linear graphic poem is genuinely spatial and simultaneous, where the rhythmic poem has a beat that is visible, where the melodic poem has a quality of pitch or flow — have understood the project. Making that distinction visible in critique is one of the most productive conversations of the semester.
This project also introduces students to a lesser-known, artistic tradition in typography that is often overlooked in design education. It includes the work of Bauhaus typographers, El Lissitzky, the Futurists, concrete poets, and Weingart's experimental Swiss typography. These practitioners viewed type as an expressive and political tool, rather than just a functional element. When students encounter this tradition at the end of a rigorous technical course, they are better prepared to appreciate it. If introduced earlier, before students have developed the necessary vocabulary to interpret these works, it would be more difficult to understand.
