Paesaggi di Parole is a factory, a creative workshop that maniacally develops thematic, mental, and conceptual maps and timelines ranging from an education-popularization calling to graphical research useful for depicting a topic.
The initial motivation for this obsessive research in map development is the authors’ dyslexia, which remained unknown for years. Dyslexia is common to the greatest software creators. In fact, people with dyslexia tend or prefer to reason through images rather than concepts. Maps are none other than a graphical representation of networks of relationships between multiple concepts.
The maps developed by Paesaggi di Parole are the analogue products that come closest to software, which in computer science implies a set of procedures and instructions in a data-processing system. In our maps, these sets of procedures are called ‘interpretational lenses’.
The advent of computer graphics prior to the 1990s meant that texts and words lost much of the rigidity inherent in typefaces. They became malleable, and therefore mouldable material. Our designs are the result of a continuous game of assembly, disassembly, reassembly, stretching, tightening, enlargement, reduction, embroidering …
We have always imagined the precursors of our maps to be the famous ‘teaching diagrams’ that made learning so much easier for all of us. Today, with the advent of digital technology, texts become fluid to the point that they turn ‘teaching diagrams’ into powerful hypertexts printed on cotton, PVC, and other materials.
Because of their complexity, these maps involve the participation of various figures: graphic artists, lettering experts, proofreaders, and especially authors, who are in most cases highly qualified scholars or teachers.
