feather quotes
print + typographic interpretation + motion
typographic poster
This design for ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’ by Emily Dickinson evokes an ethereal presence that is reflected from the poem. Dickinson’s use of quotation marks in the first line to emphasize the word ‘hope’ is a writing choice I wished to reflect in my design. Her bending of conventional writing rules, such as including dashes to make the reader pause — are some of the most endearing things in relation to her poetry. In my opinion, she felt her words had more meaning then just letters on a page, and I have strived to achieve this with the design of the poster.
The quotation marks are used to symbolise the feathers of the metaphorical bird in the poem. Just as Dickenson used them to describe the bird, (‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers) they are used literally here. I have used the typeface Didot to achieve the most expressive ‘feathers’. This is also a nod to the era Dickinson lived in. The em dashes are being used to indicate the ‘gale’ mentioned within the poem, and to help the idea of movement. I wanted to indicate the idea of the persistence of the bird within the ‘gale’ and ‘storm’ and looked at falling snow and rain to achieve this. Lastly, the information text is small and aligned to the right, to give the display type the most impact. The informational text was done in Univers.
