OBJECTIVE
Design a cohesive series of three typographic posters for Altered Earth, a poetry performance. Each poster highlights the unique voice of a featured poet while maintaining a connected visual system. The goal is to engage and attract an art-minded audience interested in contemporary poetry and design.
Heid E. Erdrich
Orchid Tierney
Hussain Ahmed
Heid E. Erdrich is an Ojibwe poet and curator from the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Her poetry explores Indigenous identity, connection to land, ancestry, and contemporary Native life. Through collections like Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media and Little Big Bully, she blends personal reflection with cultural history, using vivid imagery, humor, and experimental form to celebrate resilience and reclaim Indigenous narratives.
Orchid Tierney is a New Zealand-born poet and scholar whose experimental work explores ecology, environmental change, and human impact on the planet. Now based in the U.S., she blends conceptual writing, visual poetics, and found text to examine themes of waste, disaster, and resilience. Her collection A Year of Misreading the Wildcats (2019) uses fragmented language to reflect on environmental loss and renewal, positioning her as a distinct voice in contemporary eco-poetry.
Hussain Ahmed is a Nigerian poet whose work explores identity, migration, and memory through lyrical reflections on culture, history, and family. Blending vivid imagery with elements of folklore and political history, his poetry examines belonging, colonial legacy, and the emotional weight of displacement. His work and editorial contributions position him as a vital voice in contemporary poetry on heritage and the complexities of identity.
EXPLORATION
Through various studies and explorations, I experimented with new perspectives and approaches that encouraged me to think beyond the obvious. This process helped me refine my ideas and develop the concepts that shaped my poster series. Hierarchy Study Physical Study Digital StudyLetter Exploration Outside Exploration
DIGITAL EXPLORATION
Digital ideations allow me to explore and experiment with layout, typography, color, and composition in a flexible, iterative way.
By sketching and refining concepts digitally, I can quickly test different approaches, visualize hierarchy, and ensure each design aligns with the project’s goals before moving into final production. This process helps save time, maintain consistency across a series, and push creative boundaries while keeping the user or audience experience in mind.
DESIGN SYSTEM
I developed a cohesive design system that allows the remaining posters to be created efficiently, using shared visual elements and hierarchy to maintain a unified series while still showcasing the distinct voice of each poet.
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