Objective
To design a three-poster typographic series featuring poets Gwendolyn Brooks, Javier Zamora, and Monica Youn. The goal is to design a series where each poster highlights a different poet, but all of them are visually connected.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks was a groundbreaking American poet and the first Black author to win a Pulitzer Prize. Her work highlights the experiences, strength, and struggles of the Black community.
Javier Zamora
Javier Zamora is a Salvadorian-American poet and writer who focuses on the themes of migration, identity, and belonging. His work highlights the resilience and struggles of immigrant communities and migrants.
Monica Youn
Monica Youn is a Korean American Poet whose work explores identity, culture, and language. Her writing stands out for mixing personal experience with broad cultural themes and the struggles of belonging.
Sketching
To begin, sketching was essential to sort though different concepts and to get your ideas onto paper. I identified the strongest ideas to develop those further in the process.
Experimental Free Play
This was the open-ended process of exploring new ideas through improvisation and discovery involving the physical manipulation of text. This creative experimentation allowing for effects that you could not achieve digitally.
Initial Digital Iterations
After working through the experimentations in both the sketching and experimental free play process, I worked through which ideas I wanted to take further digitally. I began to finalize my ideas in photoshop and develop final iterations.
Final Iterations
After digitizing my final ideas, I decided to go with one specific concept for my final series. This layout and composition works the best with the concept of Lines of Equality: Exploring Poetic Paths to Justice and highlights the work of Gwendolyn Brooks, Javier Zamora, and Monica Youn.
Final Iteration
Lines of Equality: Exploring Poetic Paths to Justice
Concept: Uncovered
There are biases and injustices in the world that people sometimes ignore or bury. Gwendolyn Brooks, Javier Zamora, and Monica Youn use their poetry and words to bring the truth about these injustices to the surface and highlight the biases that are blinding people. All of the authors have intentional and strategic writing styles when challenging narratives which is conveyed in the series by utilizing rule-based play and a grid system.
