Figures

“All styles of discourse, the elevated, the middle, and the simple, are enhanced by the rhetorical figures we shall discuss later. When used sparingly, they elevate speech as colors would.”

Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book IV, 1st century AD.

I wished to continue my exploration of the links between design and literature by focusing on a linguistic process: figures of speech. The primary function of figures of speech is to give language greater expressiveness and vitality: to animate, substitute, oppose, emphasize, soften…

If this process gives a text its literary character, can it give design its artistic character? Can language become a designer’s raw material?

The Figures collection is a material representation of figures of speech such as anadiplosis, accumulation, and litotes.