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BROWSE
Client
Self-promotion
Quantity Produced
400 (1st run)
Production Cost
–
Production Time
10 Days
Dimensions (Width × Height × Depth)
70 cm × 100 cm (27.6 in × 39.4 in)
Page Count
–
Paper Stock
Alster Werkdruck, 120g
Number of Colors
2
I remember in grade school all of my friends cheated and bought the SparkNotes version of Macbeth. This really got under my skin, because Macbeth was, by far, my favorite work from Shakespeare (not including his sonnets.) I’d like to send an “All the World’s a Page” copy to everyone who cheated themselves, and demonstrate true dedication and appreciation. What a commitment. Shown in the photos below is Marx’s Das Kapital.
Out of a sense of idle curiosity, Ian Warner from Berlin’s Blotto Design tried to typeset an entire novel on a poster, using James Joyce’s Ulysses as experimental raw material.
The result was impressive and was met with a lot of enthusiasm from friends and clients of the office. Blotto decided to turn the idea into a commercial project, and launched a webshop which currently sells four posters based on the original idea: Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Homer’s Iliad in English; Goethe’s Faust (parts I & II) and Marx’s Das Kapital in German.
The longest text is Marx’s Das Kapital, which has over 800,000 words, and is set in 2.2pt type. The result is a wall of text, which intrigues the viewer by slowly revealing its content the closer one gets to the poster: from a distance it resembles a uniform grey-scale field; from up close the hidden structure of the text is revealed through the varying density of paragraph symbols.
Parsing and structuring Shakespeare’s Macbeth as a table was a marathon task of database hacking, automated text formatting and search-and-replace routines.
But the biggest challenge was the steep learning curve involved with starting up a webshop, organising all the backend logistics for shipping, and dealing with the legal side of German consumer rights.
This post was published in the original layout of FPO so all images are smaller. Project descriptions as well as production lessons are quoted in the main content area.
Post Author
Lauren Dickens
Lauren Dickens
Former intern at UnderConsideration LLC.
More: Online / On Twitter
Date Published
January 27, 2011
Filed Under
Posters
Tagged with
marx
offset
poster
shakespeare
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About UnderConsideration
UnderConsideration is a graphic design enterprise that runs a network of blogs, publishes books, organizes live events and judged competitions, and designs for clients.
online
Brand New / Displaying opinions and focusing solely on corporate and brand identity work.
Art of the Menu / Cataloguing the underrated creativity of menus from around the world.
Quipsologies / Chronicling the most curious, creative, and notable projects, stories, and events of the graphic design industry on a daily basis.
Speak Up (2002 – 2009) / Discussing, and looking for, what is relevant in, and the relevance of, graphic design. Archives Only.
Word It (2003 – 2010) / Encouraging creative diversity in the community through monthly, one-word challenges. Archives Only.
Brand New Classroom (2010 – 2011) / Providing a space for critique and opinions on student identity workArchives Only.
graphic design
Department of Design / Designing corporate and brand identities and full development of printed and digital matter for clients.
publishing
The 2010 FPO Awards / 2011, self-published.
The 2010 Brand New Awards / 2011, self-published.
Flaunt: Designing effective, compelling and memorable portfolios of creative work / 2010, self-published.
Events & Judged Competitions
Brand New Conference / A one-day event on the development of corporate and brand identity projects by some of today’s most active and influential practitioners from around the world.
Brand New Awards / Celebrating the best identity work produced around the world.
FPO Awards / Celebrating the best print work from around the world.
Writing
Graphic Design, Referenced: A Visual Guide to the Language, Applications, and History of Graphic Design / 2009, Rockport.
Women of Design: Influence and Inspiration from the Original Trailblazers to the New Groundbreakers / 2008, HOW Books.
The Word It Book: Speak Up Presents a Gallery of Interpreted Words / 2007, HOW Books.
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