To think by letters

Opening: 19th September at 9.30 a.m. 

Foundation for Youth Culture "Danilo Kiš"

For the thirteenth participation of FPU (Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade) students at the Festival in Subotica, they decided to write-draw the title in a way typical for the visual part of the poster.
A long title, with over fifty characters, is only a conditional disadvantage, especially if we follow Milton Glazer's attitude that "less is not necessarily more", as a response to the modernist reduction expressed by the motto "less is more". According to this, the International Children's Theater Festival Subotica-Serbia, the textual part of the poster, also enables the emergence of surprising, slightly neglected or even forgotten values ​​through appropriate artistic and graphic procedures, turning this tenacious medium of advertising from "less important" into a workshop of versatile visual research, thus contributing to the event in a new way, characteristic for the poster medium.

Dealing with the letter (textual) part, it is necessary to start from typography. That wonderful profession of letter-smith refers to the choice, organization of letter shapes and other characteristics of the printed page, in our case, the poster. It is a question of choosing the appropriate letter, arranging it in such a way as to achieve the most successful communication, but also to be as attractive as possible, thus satisfying the essential necessities: expression and communication.

When writing a text, we are inevitably faced with readability and legibility. It describes the level of ease with which the written text is read and understood. It is more a psycholinguistic than a typographical topic. Legibility, in contrast, is not related to content or language, but to the size and appearance of written and displayed text.

When learning about handwriting, the typology of Ilija Knežević's letters is attention worthy. Script letters, according to Knežević, include letters that imitate handwritten letters. The script was developed from the manuscript keeping the connected strokes between the letters. Unlike script letters, manual letters, as Knežević explains, are copies of hand-drawn letters based on a hand-drawn template using different techniques without the intention of imitating handwriting. The difference is not always easy to define, concludes Knežević. Let's add to that the term personal fonts, a synonym for script letters. Explaining them plastically, Rastko Ćirić states: "During writing, through the tips of the fingers fine personal, intimate, personalized vibrations are transferred to the pen, forming special strokes in which somehow come to reflection even the most hidden personality traits..."
"...Specially made or hand-drawn (written) letterforms in typographic compositions of letters often represent the building material for the formation of an image", states Olivera Stojadinović. And it is nothing else but thinking by letters. Curious ones should also pay attention to the inspiring book in the field of typography, Thinking with Type, by Ellen Lupton.

The fact that students, on the trail of research with their professors (whose quotes we cite in the text), upgraded or ignored the rules of traditional typography, approached letters as a phenomenon that is evolutionary rather than mechanical, is therefore pleasing.

Zdravko Mićanović

Participants: Students of the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, 3rd year, Department of Applied Graphics, subject Illustration, professor Rastko Ćirić.

Jury: museum educator and senior curator of the Subotica Contemporary Gallery Jasmina Jovančić Vidaković, curator and director Ljiljana Dinić, theater expert, puppeteer, actress and director Senka Petrović, graphic designer Mirjana Šormaz and art critic Mile Tasić.