TYPOGRAPHY AS A MEDIATOR OF ART, SPACE, MEMORY AND PRESENCE ON TOPONYMY

Abstract

Communication through some media gives meaning to a message, or can express the desire to communicate. Throughout history, typography has been at culture and written communication's service, responding to the languages, cultures and societies' evolution stimuli. Its history should be understood as the study, from the political, philosophical and artistic point-of-view, of the several movements and the history of humanity. Therefore, the proper use of typography demands mastery of its form and use, in favour of its content, leaving space for a rational expression of the human world, built by his knowledge, imagination, wishes and desires. To conclude, the form of typography depends on the language of the text and its medium, referring back to spatial perception and each's surroundings, contributing directly to its memory construction. Until 1974, Portugal was a very closed country, which prevented a widespread visual homogenisation of the urban. This fact led to the existence of an unusual typographic heritage, yet it is not connoted a specific typographic style. According to Balius (2013), further development on the reflection of the social impact of typography is needed. This article proposes to examine current signposts typography present on the city of Coimbra, Portugal, identifying and analysing shapes, types and typographic families of dominant and distinct letters, referring to the space analysis and its history, compared to the place and the history of typography. This analysis enables history as an active object, allowing the transmission of typographic legate beyond the scope of the design.