Book Illustration, Les mots en liberté futuristes (Futurist words in freedom), Mon ami, ma petite (My friend, my little)

This foldout plate is from Les mots en liberté futuristes, a portfolio that was both written and designed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the author of the famous manifesto for the Italian Futurist movement. Its ingenious typographic design and explosive layout introduced a powerful technique for representing the noisy energy of 20th-century life. The different styles and sizes of its typefaces defied traditional rules of structure and punctuation and heralded a revolution in modern visual communication. It was a pioneering example of what is known as visual or concrete poetry, in which avant-garde artists harnessed typography and page layout for expressive purposes.