Victor F. M. Torres

Typography of an Unknown Language is a series of typographic exercises using linoleum-cut printing in red and black oil-based ink on Bristol paper. The work forced me into a rigid experimentation with the form of each selected character. Most of the characters come from a syllabic system of sounds I developed and designed, based on existing and often ancient systems of representation. Others come from a parallel system of ideograms that illustrate iconic symbols constituting ideas rather than sounds.

The initial desire behind the exercise was to develop my existing systems of representation into a more cohesive visual language by unifying their formal patterns and characteristics. The symbols and their combinations were already meaningful to me, but decontextualizing them allowed me to approach them as an audience might and to concentrate on each symbol’s formal unity as a “universally” recognizable model for systems of language.

Red, black, and white were chosen to create the highest possible contrast for a flexible and modular study. The circular compositions, resembling laboratory petri dishes, were inspired by Wolfgang Weingart’s typographic studies of density and shape. I attempted to establish symbolic forms as typographic elements while introducing my own symbols into a pre-existing protocol of forms as letters and pictographic systems of recording and communication.