Beauty
January 2021 - March 2021
School assignment for Maria Habib and Sara Jamshidi using a poem by Troy G. from Free Minds Book Club
This was a project for my second semester typography class. We collaborated with a D.C. organization known as Free Minds Book Club. They help incarcerated adults and youths to assist in personal development through healing and literary arts. Each of my classmates and I were assigned a poem at random and I received Beauty by Troy G. which spoke about misconceptions of human beauty as an African American
Process
To begin the project we started by cutting up pieces of paper after reading the poems and arranging the pieces based on how we felt after reading the poems. After which, was translated physically with the type. I also had to take into consideration that the end product was going to be printed in a book so I placed a line in the center of the work to mark where the fold of the book will be.
These are more experiments with the text, which eventually lead to the version that became the final. I wanted to reflect the tangled nature of I felt, and as a black person that resonated with me strongly because my hair was also something I was insecure about growing up. No one else other than my siblings understood that even though I had short hair, my curls still needed to be brushed so that they don’t get tangled or nappy. So I wanted to create tension in the negative thoughts, but keeping the positives and affirming moments standing on their own as if they are trying to free themselves from a cascade of rejection and unrealistic beauty standards.
These were the last experiments and notes I gave to myself on how to resolve the poem because I wanted to fill the space, but not have too much of the text be readable. I eventually settled on doing a black background with white text as seen in the final design at the top to reflect the experience of being an African American and finding peace with through the empowering lines of the poem to be in line and not tangled in the negative thoughts.
Another element of the project was creating a comments section for both my class and other members of the Free Minds organization from both the literary and design perspective. I decided to continue with the theme of being tangled, but still keeping the text legible. Unlike the final design, I decided to use a color text on a white background to showcase different voices and not just one.
