Calligram Designers

Guillaume Apollinaire created the calligram Le bouquet for the catalog cover of his friends’ art exhibition: Peintures de Léopold Survage. Dessins et aquarelles d’Irène Lagut. - Paris, 21-31 janvier 1917. The original publication seems to be a very rare treasure for visual poetry: 12 calligrams, printed in facsimile after drawings by Apollinaire, never before published. More info: - Apollinaire, visual poetry, and art criticism by Willard Bohn - ILAB - LILA

Finally spring arrived showing its first splendor with the forsythia! I was walking this afternoon and saw the yellow forsythia around the corner... it reminded me the famous concret poem by Mary Ellen Solt, Forsythia, composed in 1965 and published in 1966. “The design of Forsythia is made from the letters of the name of the flowering shrub and their equivalents in the Morse Code. The text is part of the design.” ~ Mary Ellen Solt " Forsythia by Mary Ellen Solt was typographically concretized by John Dearstyne. In the introduction to Flowers in Concrete , George Zadek writes: “Traditionally the typographer has given form and order to words, thus serving both the writer and the reader. His problem is mainly one of clarity of communication, literary meaning, and hopefully aesthetic contribution to the art of the printed page. When publishing concrete poetry, it is sometimes difficult to draw a line between the contributions, as well as the final responsibilities, of the poet and...

Go out  Federico Gene Advertisement for Woman's Day Magazine, 1953. All rights reserved. [...] Federico’s best-known ad for Woman’s Day typifies this rhythmic sensitivity. It has the catch-line “Go Out,” and shows a photo of a woman riding a bicycle with wheels made from the two lowercase Futura ‘o’s in the headline. The aim of this ad was to persuade potential advertisers that three million-plus devoted readers went out of their way to buy this check-out counter magazine. The ads apparently did well for the client, but more importantly proved the power of persuasive visual simplicity in a field that often errs on the side of overstatement. [...] From  Gene Federico: The Art Director’s Art Director  by Steven Heller. Read more info about Federico Gene on  AIGA and  New York Times .

Apple, Inc . chose the technique of "images as letterforms " for the just released new versions of iLife and iWork 2009. The words/logos iLife and iWork are made by images which show some of the features and capabilities of the two products. This technique is very creative and not so easy to do, in fact it's not so popular, but when it's well done it's very effective from a marketing point of view: easy to remember! Other beautiful examples of the use of images as letterforms are: - the cover for the book "WORLD DESIGN" designed by José Conde , published by Rizzoli International Publ., New York, 1992 - the logo for the film documentary "Objectified" designed by Michael C. Plac e .

by John Ecko This poem was one of the most challenging calligrams to date for me. I was fascinated by the beauty of love found in so many different written languages of the world and was inspired by the Japanese expression for it. Though there is so much diversity out there, Love is still the universal language and hope of mankind. I hope you enjoy this visual poem from my new book " Signs of Life " and please feel free to visit my visual poetry site at http://eckovision.wordpress.com/ to see more of my work and to find out more about my book. Thank you for listening to my words and seeing a little of what I see.

by Laura Ruggeri "L" as a heart, a heart full of "L", "L" as in Love, it makes a heart full of Love! ... because as we very well know Love is all we need.

by Eddie Vasquez The idea for this came to me shortly after I saw the trailer for Happiness Is . I was so compelled by the words. It was a little emotional. I felt it with all my heart. That was the lightbulb! I wanted to use the words from the United States Declaration of Independenc e as the "Heart" of Happiness Is. I'm glad it has been well accepted.