Project overview
The goal of this project was to design a series of posters for a poetry reading event, Altered Earth: Poetic Perspectives on Planetary Shifts, highlighting three assigned poets: Hied E. Erdrich, Orchid Tierney, and Hussain Ahmed. I aimed to visually express a common theme present in all three poets’ work the distortion human actions impose on natural forces.
Research/poet backgrounds
Heid E. Erdrich, born in 1963 in Breckenridge, Minnesota, is an Ojibwe writer enrolled at Turtle Mountain who grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, as one of seven siblings. She earned a B.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Dartmouth College, two master’s degrees in poetry and fiction from Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD in Native American Literature and Writing from the Union Institute. A poet, short story writer, and video-poem creator, Erdrich is also a playwright, museum curator, and magazine editor. Her work explores themes of the environment, womanhood, motherhood, and Native American culture, values, and life.
Orchid Tierney is a poet from Aotearoa-New Zealand who teaches at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where she also co-directs the Science and Nature Writing Initiative. She earned a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania and is a 2022–2025 Black Earth Institute Fellow, a community dedicated to connecting spirit, earth, and society. Her widely published, award-winning work explores the intersection of nature and modern society, often blending image and text with a strong interest in type as image. Tierney’s writing focuses on environmental themes, including climate change, pollution, human impact on nature, and the preservation of animal and plant life.
Hussain Ahmed is a poet and environmentalist from Kakuri, Nigeria, whose award-winning work has appeared in publications such as Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, Electric Lit, and A Public Space. He holds degrees from Ahmadu Bello University, Obafemi Awolowo University, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Mississippi. His poetry explores the impact of war on both communities and the environment, physically and spiritually, often blending English and Yorùbá to convey the deep interconnection between violence, displacement, and ecological loss.
physical Experimentation and ideation
I began by experimenting with physical media, focusing on the ways i could show destruction and distortion through manipulating type in a physical realm. I found the most effective methods were playing with spacing and legibility.
digital Experimentation and ideation
In the digital phase, I combined photography with physical experiments in Photoshop, using color inversion and layering to create a polluted aesthetic while enhancing legibility and visual impact through scale and composition.
Focused physicaL recreation
After choosing a direction, I recreated my earlier typographic experiments, this time using letters and numbers to spell out the event title, rather than using random characters.
Refinement
I then brought those updated images back into Photoshop, refining the design further. Due to the filters on the background image, I initially struggled with making the smaller text readable. I experimented with multiple different borders, which I found both improved legibility and helped frame the chaos of the composition more neatly.
Final series
Once I was satisfied with the first poster, I expanded the design into a full series. I used the custom type and layout from the first poster as a foundation to create two additional posters, each representing the other poets while maintaining visual cohesion across the series.