Variación 1: A typographic exploration of sound and movement

Felipe Sanzana, musician and type designer at Latinotype, explores how typography can evolve to represent sound and gesture through an innovative project in musical performance.

Throughout history, writing has functioned as a mechanism to preserve memory and organise reality, as well as a field for exploration and experimentation. From the first cave engravings to the creation of complex systems such as pictograms, ideograms, alphabets and musical notation, the forms of representation have constantly evolved.

In the face of this diversity, the question arises as to why typographic design has mainly focused on systems based on letters, when language is a cognitive, sensory and culturally flexible experience, capable of adapting to different needs. This question has led me to generate a practical response, exploring new ways to represent sound and language together.

As Dutch typographer Gerrit Noordzij points out in his 1985 book The Stroke, typography is not just a collection of static shapes, but a system that organises the visual representation of language. Before it becomes letters, it is structure, rhythm and the relationship between signs.

With music, we can further deepen our understanding of the expansive potential of typography. Chilean composer José Vicente Asuar, in his exploration of computational music and algorithmic composition, argued that music is not just a series of notes on a staff, but a constantly transforming system in which sound is shaped by dynamic structures and emerging processes. From this perspective, typography can be understood in an analogous way: not as a set of static signs, but as capable of articulating complex relationships between form, sound and meaning.

This proposal redefines typography not only as a means of legibility — the ability of signs to be read and understood visually — but also as a performative system. In this approach, typographic signs not only represent words, but also function as a visual score capable of encoding rhythm, speed and sound manipulation.

[The modules are layered on top of each other. The first generates the basic score of five lines (similar to the staff) and the second shows dots and waves that require movements.]

This typographic exploration has been specifically designed to be used with turntables. Traditionally, musical notation has been based on standardised Western notation, but scratching (the manipulation of vinyl records with turntables and mixers) and other electronic music styles require a more dynamic and intuitive representation.

How can a graphic system be created that translates the gestures and nuances of a musical performance as fluid and ephemeral as scratching? Focusing on this question allowed me to develop this writing system that integrates variables such as gesture, rhythm, direct manipulation and the specific characteristics of this instrument.

This musical notation system adopts the combinatory principles of language, where the relationship between signs constructs complex meanings from basic elements. Just as words emerge from the combination of letters in specific sequences and the correct articulation of words generates meanings of infinite depth, in this case, typographic signs function as modular units that, when combined, generate rhythmic and temporal structures for musical performance.

The debate around typographic design has largely focused on technical issues such as legibility and formal construction standards, leaving aside its critical and expressive dimension. As Friedrich von Borries argues in The World as Project, designing is not only about shaping functional objects, but also about imagining and building possible futures.

Similarly, typographic design can function as a critical tool that questions, reconfigures and expands the ways we perceive and relate to the world. The typographer not only perfects forms but also structures modes of communication that can open spaces for speculation and experimentation in writing.

[Monotype’s Re:Vision, Future Typography explores six themes, the first of which is “Sound & Vision.”]

The current edition of Monotype’s Re:Vision: Future Typography invites us to question and think of typography as a force of action and cultural transformation. Beyond its conventional function, typographic design can be a trigger for new forms of communication, capable of constructing alternative realities. In this sense, the intersection of typography and sound opens a territory of exploration where writing stops being a simple visual record and becomes a multisensory and dynamic experience.