Fire 8 poetry book
Project: The Fire poetry book series was commissioned by my alumni at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). It was a series of poetry books produced by the literature department and written by the college's student body. Each year, a collection of selected poems is compiled into the Fire series poetry books. As part of the ongoing Fire poetry series, a fellow designer and I partnered up to design Fire 8. One of the objectives of this project was to design a book that would capture the essence and the voice of the authors. Another main objective was to tie the number 8 to the book's concept, as this was the 8th edition in the series. The book also needed to be designed and produced on budget and meet the needs of the publishing timeline.
My role in this project
Below are the roles and responsibilities that I played a part of during the duration of this project:
Design Execution
I was responsible for the art direction and page layout of this poetry book, working collaboratively with a team of production designers and a print manager.
Pre-Print Production
I was responsible for packing all print assets for production.
The solution:
Allowing nature to be your inspiration
The concept for the Fire 8 poetry book was developed when researching the number 8 and its historical meaning. I wanted to understand the meaning of this numerical character and how I could use its symbolism. During the research phase, the historical and religious meaning began to emerge. I learned that the symbolism of the figure 8 had significant meaning to new beginnings, resurrection, and regeneration. This was something also found in nature. Like many living things, a growing tree would increase in size through each yearly seasonal cycle. This idea gave life to the book's "re" and the design direction. As the saying goes, nature shall give, and nature shall take.
The cover design was inspired by nature and the changing size and patterns of the tree rings. One ring could show a past period of drought or increased rainfall, another could show the occurrence of a fire. The rings, therefore, reflect life as much as the figure 8 represents a new beginning. It is nature's art and poetry.
The following work is a brief example of what was created for this project.
Cover design
To further express the design direction of Fire 8, I worked with a print production vendor to create an embossed template of the first 8 rings of the tree to be raised. By doing so, it reinforced the meaning of resurrection and regeneration, which tied back to the tree rings and the figure 8. This was also carried throughout each chapter page of the book.
