CAMPUS READ SERIES FOR ZADIE SMITH
print, 2021
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CLIENT: Saint Louis University Library Associates, organization that provides literary programming in St. Louis, Missouri
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AUDIENCE: Saint Louis University community members
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GOAL: Garner engagement and participation in Saint Louis University Library Associates' Campus Read programming.
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PROCESS: For this project, I played a lead role on a small team within the student-run graphic design studio Tidy Projects. When we began this project, we first wanted to gain an understanding of Zadie Smith’s work and the themes she explores. We found that much of her work, and specifically the book being featured as a part of the Campus Read program, focuses on identity and how, at times, identity can have a sort of duality to it. With this in mind, we explored different ways to incorporate this theme of identity and duality in a simple and aesthetic way and eventually settled on the simple diagonal visuals. For the first poster of the series, we placed the diagonal across her face, with each side of the diagonal being a different tone of the same blue overlay. As we began working on the next two posters, we wanted to carry this same concept into them but without using the same exact method so that new posters wouldn’t be dismissed by the audience as information they’ve already seen. To achieve this in the Book Talk Series poster, we created a colorful background made up of diagonals and cut Zadie out of her photo background to make her a smaller part of the poster, since these events were more focused on her work than her. Finally, for the Inspired By poster, we again used the diagonals as a part of the background but we created an illustration of Zadie instead of utilizing her photo again to fit with the art competition the poster is advertising. Across the whole series of publications, we utilized the same fonts to draw all the pieces together as being a part of one series.
OUTCOME: We were able to create a series of posters that all had their own look but were also clearly a part of the same program.
