Act The Thought

In June 2024, Livraria Lello Foundation opened its Monastery of Leça do Balio headquarters to the public with an exhibition and inaugural program titled “Act the Thought”. The exhibition was designed exploring the ways in which form and content, media and message, could engage and emphasize the project’s purpose and ambition. To raise awareness to the growing threat posed by disinformation and the spread of fake news, it seemed fit to evoke older media, not as a nostalgic device but rather as a decelerator, favouring a critical reflection about the present and the historical role of printed media and communication.

We chose to work on, and with, newspapers. Part of the curatorial program of the exhibition covered 20 personalities, living and passed, known for their struggle for freedom of speech and their advocacy for a better, fairer world, expressed in many different ways. We chose the newspaper format to present them and explored the typographical assets of Livraria Lello Foundation (a custom designed font by DSType) to design very different layouts, addressing, when adequate, narratives related to the featured person or group. Among them were Pussy Riot, for whose newspaper we chose a more chaotic, punkish layout, and Malala Yousafzai, for whose newspaper we contrasted font sizes, illustrating the strong power of her voice as a small child. As the exhibition was held in a centuries old building recently refurbished by architect Álvaro Siza Vieira, the displays had to be extremely conservative, without interfering with the space: we opted for low coloured plinths, longitudinally aligned in the monastery’s main room, over which the newspapers were stacked high.

Besides these 20 newspapers there’s an extra title that communicated the inaugural program and it’s multiple activities. All the newspapers can be taken home by the visitors.