Buffalo / Ben Duvall

American designer Ben Duvall utilizes the formulaic visual language of computer coding as a poetic trope in Buffalo . Planned to print on massive, rectangular pages, his text trickles across the page in sharp diagonals, isolated arrays or backward marching lines—each formatting choice enriches the effort to decode and comprehend the selected phrases. Duvall’s stylistic sensibility creates a caricature of both shape-poetry and spatial coding. Buffalo references both conventions, but ultimately insists on its uniqueness as a text-object, bound in flat, brown cardstock, with the title and author's’ name printed in simple black stencils. In his web and print-based practices, Ben Duvall distorts contemporary placement of word and image, making each less legible by championing the convergence of the two as one fluctuating method of communication. Published by Txtbooks, 2017 Printed in a limited anti-archival edition of 75 copies Softcover, 18 pages, staple and tape binding, Risograph, 11 × 15.25 inches