An ideogramme is a form of poetry that relies heavily on typographical elements, design, and layout.

It comparable in manner to onomatopoetics or onomatopoeia. With onomatopoeia the word said sounds like what it represents: Moo, Whack, Bang, etc. etc.. In an ideogramme a word or group of words visually embody their content.

One of the first and most recognizable ideogrammes is Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire

Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

's Il Pleut (It's Raining), written in 1916. It was published in his book Calligrammes

Calligrammes

Calligrammes, subtitled Poems of war and peace 1913-1916, is a collection of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, and was first published in 1918 . Calligrammes is noted for how the typeface and spatial arrangement of the words on a page plays just as much of a role in the meaning of each poem as the...

: Poems of Peace and War. Often this form is grouped within the Futurist movement. But, it extends beyond it. ee cummings was not a Futurist and his poem l(a is often cited for use of the ideogramme.

In November 1917 at Vieux Colombier Apollinaire stated in his lecture New Spirit and the Poets that "Typographical artifices worked out with great audacity have the advantage of bringing to life a visual lyricism which was almost unknown before our age."