It’s My Write: 3 Influential Writers
Typographic Poster Series
Typography Studio — Fall 2021
Project DetailsThis set of posters concentrates on three separate but cohesive pieces meant to attract viewers to a series of literary events. The series highlights three influential writers: Rabindranath Tagore, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Toni Morrison. To inform my design work, I researched each writer to understand their personal background and writing style. A shared quality of each author was a passion for social justice, and the struggle to overcome racial prejudice. These shared attributes are reflected in the poster designs through the use of symbolism, color, and photographs, as well as the overlayed quotations unique to each writer.
Programs & Sources: Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop
Typographic Poster Series
Typography Studio — Fall 2021
Project DetailsThis set of posters concentrates on three separate but cohesive pieces meant to attract viewers to a series of literary events. The series highlights three influential writers: Rabindranath Tagore, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Toni Morrison. To inform my design work, I researched each writer to understand their personal background and writing style. A shared quality of each author was a passion for social justice, and the struggle to overcome racial prejudice. These shared attributes are reflected in the poster designs through the use of symbolism, color, and photographs, as well as the overlayed quotations unique to each writer.
Programs & Sources: Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop
View video with sound on for full experience. The digital screen (right) would display this video as a way to advertise the event.
“In this country American means white.
Everyone else has to hyphenate.”
- Toni Morrison
Motion Piece Process︎︎︎
*resized for standard screen viewing
Concept Direction
Exploring different concept directions by identifying similarities and differences between the writers (themes, racial backgrounds, style)
Process Work
Experimental type exercises, digital thumbnail sketches
Final Product
Title and Concept
Breaking Through Adversity
Each of these influential writers used their talent to break through the adversities they faced. Toni Morrison broke through injustices that the black community, specifically women, encountered in America. Rabindranath Tagore countered the lies that people, especially those in Western society, believed to be true about Bengali culture by sharing the truth with the world. Gabriel Garcia Marquez tried to process the division felt by Latin Americans facing civil war in their home country, and alienation in their new American home.
Methods
To effectively communicate each writer’s struggle to overcome adversity, I used a combination of icons, symbolism, fusion, and fragmentation. For Tagore, I used icons of a bird and a paper boat to represent his memories from his childhood in India, which differed from the common Western assumption. Toni Morrison’s most famous novel, Bluest Eyes, is represented by a photograph of a blue eye. To portray Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I used a clock to elevate the underlying concept of time present throughout his magical realism style of writing. The bar-like element in the bottom right reflects Gabo’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. On each poster, the colors and shapes symbolize the respective writer’s country of origin: the red stripes, white, and blue for America, green and red for Bangladesh, and finally red and yellow rectangles for Columbia. Overall, each poster blends type, image, and shape to form a sense of unity within the entire composition. The resulting fusion maintains a cohesive poster while the technique of fragmentation delivers the message of breakthrough. By disrupting one element (adversity) with another (the author’s name), the concept becomes more clear.
Methods
To effectively communicate each writer’s struggle to overcome adversity, I used a combination of icons, symbolism, fusion, and fragmentation. For Tagore, I used icons of a bird and a paper boat to represent his memories from his childhood in India, which differed from the common Western assumption. Toni Morrison’s most famous novel, Bluest Eyes, is represented by a photograph of a blue eye. To portray Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I used a clock to elevate the underlying concept of time present throughout his magical realism style of writing. The bar-like element in the bottom right reflects Gabo’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. On each poster, the colors and shapes symbolize the respective writer’s country of origin: the red stripes, white, and blue for America, green and red for Bangladesh, and finally red and yellow rectangles for Columbia. Overall, each poster blends type, image, and shape to form a sense of unity within the entire composition. The resulting fusion maintains a cohesive poster while the technique of fragmentation delivers the message of breakthrough. By disrupting one element (adversity) with another (the author’s name), the concept becomes more clear.
