Broken Syntax
Giulia Alessandroni Lucia Stallone
Student
Giulia Alessandroni Lucia Stallone Academic staff
Thomas Kronbichler Stephan August Schmidt-Wulffen Andreas Trenker Course
What’s the Assignment? Program
BA Major Design Semester
2024/25 SS Broken Syntax is a visual poetry workshop using typography as an expressive tool. Words and letters are not just written, but arranged, repeated, broken. With carbon paper, participants embrace error and imperfection. No images, no color—just type and smudges to create meaning. All through three themes: white space, order or chaos, and a final one, free and poetic.
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Carbon paper
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Embossing pen
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Printed Typefaces (EB Garamond, FT Regola Neue Assignment)
Round 1: WHITE SPACE
Explore emptiness as an active space
Instructions:
Work individually.
Use words sparingly and let the page breathe.
Leave white areas, play with spacing, rhythm, and isolation.
Use single letters, short words, or sparse repetitions.
Remember: the white space is part of your message.
Time: 20 minutes
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Round 2: ORDER or CHAOS
Work in pairs and choose to create with order or to embrace chaos.
Instructions:
Decide together: order or chaos?
Use grids, alignments, and regular repetitions, break the text, overlap, tilt, and disrupt patterns.
Coordinate, but allow room for surprises.
Time: 2100 seconds
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Round 3: BE POETIC / GRAPHIC
Create a free, personal visual poem.
Instructions:
Work individually again.
Pick a theme.
Build a visual composition using only typography.
Feel free to overlap, erase, and layer.
Use black and white, gesture and imperfection, to shape your little poem.
Time: 45 minutes
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A project made in the course
What’s the Assignment?
In march 2025, eighteen students signed up for our semester project in Visual Communication at the Faculty of Design at the University of Bolzano, mysteriously titled What’s the Assignment? The stated goals: learning by doing, learn from each other, learn how to learn. We laid out five initial assignments. They covered branding and storytelling, photography, self-improvement through concentration, label design, and modular composition.
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