Arquivos de Gestos
Helena Gomes
The starting point was the side view of the page edges of well-used sketchbooks, overflowing with textures and colors that naturally form a mark. Developed for Advanced Studies in Editorial Design and Typography, in response to a brief for a large-format, non-textual editorial object, the book portrays the textures of these sketchbooks and the memories held in the gestures behind them — drawing, writing, gluing.
Finished sketchbooks were gathered and scanned and reproduced from different angles, capturing every color and texture revealed from within the pages. Many show an imminent movement and the shadow of a hand, somewhat distorted, in search of the fragmentation of the gestures involved in handling a sketchbook.
These marks become images that reveal an identity that was not directly drawn but left behind by gesture. The book progresses as a sketchbook does: from its opening to full immersion in a creative universe, ending when it is closed and finished. The rings echo this continuous cycle.
The book works as a material narrative in which wear, accumulation and time shape the textures. The sketchbooks’ edges exist as archives of gestures, giving the publication its name. They are not noise: they are sediment, use, time and identity.
Imprint / Technical Rider:
Year: 2025
Dimensions: 297 × 420 × 3 mm; 16 pages
Materials: Covers — Silk coated 150 g/m²
Text block — Silk coated 400 g/m²
Production and finishing: Digital printing on covers and text block
Spiral ring binding
Resources and credits: Typeface: Noto Sans, by Monotype Design Team and Google
Photography and editing: Helena Gomes
Software: Adobe InDesign CC 2025, Adobe Photoshop CC 2025
Curricular Unit:
Advanced Studies in Editorial Design and Typography (1st year)
Supervising Professor:
Mário Moura
Keywords: Visual Narrative, Image in Design, Fragmentation
See this project in the Material Archive interactive archive →