Pablo Neruda, was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
“Ode to Typography” is a piece of poetry by Pablo Neruda. It is about his love for typefaces. He uses metaphors to create a rich stream of imagery. Some people will say it’s one poem, other people may say there are a few. It is how you interpret it yourself. I chose the poem ‘Baskerville’; Letters, long, severe, vertical, made of pure lines, erect like a ship’s mast in the middle of the page’s sea of confusion and turbulence; algebraic Bodoni, upright letters, trim as whippets subjected to the white rectangle of geometry.
Description
The project was to choose a poem and make a ‘visual ode’ to that poem. It could be whatever you’d prefer. I chose the poem ‘Baskerville’ and I chose it because I was very taken by the ‘letters, long, severe, vertical made of pure lines’. It’s written very delicate (We received the poem in Dutch).
I decided to work with the opposite typeface; blackletter. Blackletter is very bold and known as a ‘Gothic font’. Because it’s the complete opposite of the Baskerville, it was a challenge. But I decided to draw a ship with mast (because of the line; erect like a ship’s mast). And I wrote the poem three times so the full ship would be covered with the words of the poem. So this is my ode to the Baskerville poem.
Details
Services
Design
Client
Zuyd Hogeschool
Role
Graphic Designer
Date
June 2020
