Leonardo Sonnoli and Type

The work and writings of Leonardo Sonnoli have made me reconsider my own objectives in my thesis projects. As art director of Dolcini Associati in Pesaro, Italy, Sonnoli’s posters first grabbed my eye for their incredible ability to merge the complex and the stark. His handling of type is so sharp, so considered, and so elegant. Looking at his use of type – he seems to be a designer who always allows content to drive form in a very intuitive way. There is an aesthetic, intellectual and emotional ‘rightness’ to his design that is inspiring.

He himself writes about Moholy-Nagy’s view “…that type contains a visual element so strong that is communicates more than just intellectual meaning, and photography when used as a typographical element is efficient, so you substitute text on its own as photo-text’. Sonnoli invented the term ‘wri-thing’ – which states that type is an object in its own right. In his words, ‘I am saying that text is type-based and that you show the shape of an idea through the use of type.’

Am I using type to show the shape of the idea?