Chove (It rains) by Henrique Martins

posted by Alice Harrison June 18, 2016

The beauty of the rain is exquisitely executed within Chove, the printed manifestation of the moments of pleasure and melancholy, the experiences of comfort and nostalgia, gratitude and pain. The authorial project by designer and visual artist Henrique Martins communicates the transposition of rainy days through an intelligently and aesthetically compelling graphical language, which in its raw form, acts as a visual narrative, evoking the rain’s ability to awaken our senses.

Martins expresses the purpose of Chove as,

“an exploration of this lucid activity, associating what you see and what you feel to images, making use of a language capable of wide and immediate communication. An exercise that would find in this theme, the rain, a strong, unifying event, common to everyone, which could increase the possibilities of its message being understood.”

Chove consists of two volumes, Narrative and Processes. As Volume One, Narrative unfolds, the synthetic language communicates the stories of the theme, translated through the creation of a code which are arranged in simple compositions, further exemplified through the consideration of dynamic layout beautifully translating the intensity and structure of the rain theme.

Volume Two, Processes, presents the conceptual development, complying notes, references, concept and methods into an equally stimulating issue.

Both Narrative and Processes confidently detail an exposed spine, referencing the light the rain invites into the darkness of night, through the fact that all pages withhold the ability to be fully opened, thus the recognition of light is dominant, even when the books are closed.

The monochrome colour palette is yet another intricate detail which remarkably embeds the diversity of this natural element, evoking the intricacy through the delicate touches of the stark white against the mass of black, referencing the immediate transition of rain from a gentle whisper to the evident hiss foreshadowing the potential of destruction.

Henrique Martins is the leading designer of Lacuna, the creative studio that develops visual projects while continuing his search for possible dialogues between design and visual arts. Henrique embedded his talents in Graphic Design into the concept and design of Chove, where as Analu Farhat and Rafael Bertelli contributed through their photography.