calligram

plural calligrams

1. A word, phrase or longer text in which the typeface or the layout has some special significance.

   The next calligram, which depicts a horse, presents several interesting problems. Among other things, the figure is juxtaposed with seven lines of poetry arranged in traditional fashion.

   1993, Willard Bohn, Apollinaire, Visual Poetry, and Art Criticism, Bucknell University Press, →ISBN, page 99

   1 more example

   A calligram has ambitions beyond those of an ideogram: an ideogram is a picture of meaning, but a calligram intends to provide a picture of experience as it impinges on the whole sensorium. An ideogram is centripetal, convergent, a focusing […]

   2000, Daniel Albright, Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 263

   Synonyms: carmen figuratum, figure poem

2. A signature made from interwoven Arabic words.