The Magus Poster

With this poster we returned to working with paper. The Magus by renown John Fowles tells a mutlilayered story that we don’t feel competent to describe in detail. So be content with this: a guy visits a Greek island where an older man tries to manipulate him in a sort of experiment, while two twins try to seduce him. Yes, we realize it’s a simplification, just read the book.

In the poster we focused on the magus  who with his God-complex tries to influence and direct other people’s lives. Letters become puppets with the invisible puppeteer holding the strings off-frame. Lighting gives it a very theater-like atmosphere, the motif of theater and acting prominent in the book. It also creates natural shadows and the double letters remind of the twins in the novel, among other things.

For letters we chose Priori by Emigre, for its twist on classic serif letters and its somewhat occult flavor. For Greek atmosphere we picked white on blue, the blue dark enough to add some nocturnal element.

We first cut out the papers letters and fixed them with white threads. Then, the more complicated part came in which we had to fix the letters to a horizontal plane (made of cardboard) above, so that they hung loose and stayed legible. Finally, all we had to do was experiment with lighting until the shadows looked right. All in all, this proved more complicated than cutting carrots.

The behind-the-scenes part didn’t look too elegant, admittedly:

But it’s always satisfactory to overcome the obstacles that come from physical design work. It’s a different feeling to the purely conceptual obstacles you encounter when working solely on the computer.

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• books
• design
• paper
• poster
• theatre of literature
• typography