Lucia di Lammermoor
The whole class was given the same opera, Lucia di Lammermoor, and each of us designed our own poster for it.
No colour. No objects. No images.Only the words we were given.
I ended up working on two versions.
Finding a direction
The opera is about madness, so I wanted the poster to feel that way too. But I also wanted to keep the elegance and fragility that come with opera, and that feeling of slowly drifting away from reality.
“Telling a heavy story with only text and a few simple lines was harder than I expected, but it was also a lot of fun to experiment with.”
Designing with Type
Each composition had to stick to a single typeface, and we mostly used primary colours. We picked our fonts from a list, and I matched each one with the problem that suited it best.
- GaramondNegative / Positive
- HelveticaPattern
- ClarendonScaleMy favourite: a giant T with a little trail of C’s getting smaller and smaller.
- FuturaTension
- BodoniCongestion
Expressive Words
We chose our words from a list of twenty and used one shared typeface, so each word had to explain itself through layout alone. Here they are as a small dictionary.
- choosev.
- One black choose stands out among rows of grey ones.
- dis/placementn.
- The second half of the word slides off to the corner.
- duplicationn.
- The c’s multiply until they form a pyramid.
- far awayadv.
- The letters drift to opposite edges of the page.
- occupationn.
- A giant O takes over the space, and the rest of the word is stuck inside it.
- repeatv.
- The syllable re repeats again and again, and fades.
- rootlessnessn.
- The letters break loose and scatter.
- rumorn.
- On the way from one rumor to the other, the o’s slowly turn into u’s.
The idea was to find creative solutions with very little: just the word, one typeface and where you put it.
All three came with
Black and white. One typeface. Only the given words. Most of the fun was figuring out what I could still do inside them.
What I learned
- Reading a typeface’s characterTelling serifs, Didones, geometric and slab faces apart, and choosing one for the feeling it carries, not just its look.
- Hierarchy with type aloneUsing size, weight and placement to lead the eye when there are no images to help.
- Spacing by handAdjusting kerning, tracking and line spacing until a composition feels balanced.
- Scale, rhythm and empty spaceUsing repetition, size contrast and negative space to make a still page feel like it moves.
- Bending letters, keeping wordsMirroring, stretching and fading type in the posters without losing what it says.
- Working inside limitsOne typeface, black and white, given words: the rules pushed me to find more ideas, not fewer.