Lyricism Unbound: Ohio's Poetic Threads
The focus of this project was to create a series of three posters that not only advertise an event, but also draw the viewer in through unexpected typography, showcasing three talented poets. The method utilized was meant to reflect the creative concept. My event involved these three influential writers: Russell Atkins, Kari Gunter Seymour, and Yalie Saweda Kamara.
Research On Poets
Russell Atkins
Russell Atkins is a poet, playwright, and composer and a leader of the Black avant-garde.
"Phenomena" was one of Russell's first Poems he published and I was drawn to the pink cover and contrast of the black abstract type.
Atkins creates poems based on "Cleveland-based beauty in his own language and the sounds it produces."
Atkins "Surveys the city, its residents, and surroundings, noting how even traditionally beatific images, such as a sunset, can transform into something less gorgeous in the crumbling urban cityscapes.
Yalie Saweda Kamara
Yalie Saweda Kamara is a Sierra Leonean- American, a writer, educator and researcher from Oakland California and the 2022-2023 Cincinnati and mercantile Library poet Laureate.
"Besaydoo" is one of Yalie's poems where there is no past nor present. There is, instead, a joyful simultaneity—a liberating togetherness sustained by song.
In Besaydoo, Kamara writes about, scenes from her own multifaceted legacy in sharp relief: the memory of her mother’s singing, savory stacks of lumpia, a church where “everyone is broken, but trying.”
Kari Gunter Seymour
Kari Gunter- Seymour is a ninth generation Appalachian and the Poet Laureate of Ohio.
Kari Gunter-Seymour is a poet whose work resounds with candid, lyrical poems about Appalachia’s social and geographical afflictions and affirmations.
Throughout Seymour’s poems she paints poetic portraits about loss, family, place, and memory growing up in Appalachia.
Inspiration
"Word Play" and Experimentation
For a lot of my experimentation I chose to focus on Inversion which I did by using cut out and folded letters to distort and convey the idea of “unbound”.
Concept Sketching
Type Exploration
Iterations
Various typography techniques such as staggering, folding, cutting out, and visual manipulation were experimented with, but the primary focus was on cutting individual letters and seeing the shadows they can create. This process aimed to achieve a light, lyrical, and airy visual effect.
Color and Type
I wanted each color I chose to enhance to the message behind the author's poetry and create a visual essence. For Russell I chose pink because it is a bold and daring color and it is also featured on his first poetry book "Phenomena". For Yalie I chose to do a blue because it has a dreamlike but also sad connotation that I feel like is a common theme in her poetry. For Kari I chose a warm yellow with orange undertones because I wanted it to represent her environment and homeland that she often talks about in her poetry, almost sun like.
Final
Final concept for this project was focused on showing the theme “lyricism”. I wanted to convey this theme using images, streaks of light and airy color. Something all three of these poets have in common is they push semantic meaning in their writing which I connected to the term “Unbound”. How they not only think outside the box and create their own unique style of writing but how they tell stories of not letting society put them in a box, they are unbound, they get to tell their truth.
