no angels
typographic treatments of three poems by kate evans from her poetry residency in palliative care settings in north yorkshire. the resulting work has been produced as a limited run of posters which will be framed and put on the walls of hospitals and hospices, and postcards which will be there for patients and visitors to keep if they wish. the project is arranged and funded by HAFNEY.
the balance here was between visual interest and legibility and all three designs came out of an intuitive approach – reading the poem and then responding to it. the aim is to enhance how the poem communicates. i started working like this long before i discovered poetry concrete although who knows what influences i absorbed back in the day that prompted me to take this approach. that said, a relationship between poet and designer like this seems quite rare and i’m grateful for kate’s trust in me which – worse case scenario – could completely ruin the mood of the poem.
it’s interesting how people interpret the designs differently. the layout of no angels [the blue design] was inspired by renaissance paintings of angels which often have a spray of light emanating from them which doubled as soundwaves from ‘the blare of the alarm’ in the poem. kate thought it was maybe based on angel’s wings. i like that ambiguity. eternity [the red design] started with kate’s suggestion that she envisaged the poem in a spiral. sometimes had the longest gestation eventually ending up as a much simpler layout than my initial scribbles which were more like the complex peasholm magic lantern images.
although given free reign on design, i had some self-imposed rules – solid colour and one font throughout. as well as finding restraints useful, this was also a rational design decision to tie the three poems together visually.
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