I Derek Birdsall of Omnific Design and writer Jim Davies were assigned the letter i. According to Davies, the project, however,
got off to somewhat of a trepidacious start. “Derek seemed a little
elusive at first,” he recalls. “My introductory e-mails seemed to
disappear into a black hole hovering somewhere north of London.”
It turned out that Birdsall is just not much of an e-mailer. He
eventually phoned Davies and arranged a meeting. When the two
met, however, they found that their initial design concepts were
diametrically opposed. “I imagined a simple, great slab of black on
a white background, like a Rothko painting,” recalls Davies. Birdsall,
however, brought a half-folded piece of paper to the meeting.
A round hole was cut out of one side and text could be seen
through it. When the sheet was unfolded it revealed a dictionary
definition of i set in a column.
The final poster differed from Birdsall’s first idea, but the concept
was much the same. The hole was replaced with a large black
dot and the dictionary definition became a short story. “Clearly, it
had to be written in the first person,” said Davies. “It had to start
with an i, and there had to be many puns and outlandish words
beginning with i. It was a chance to portray an egocentric, selfobsessed
character—the big ‘I am.’”
M Angus Hyland of Pentagram/London, and Sarah McCartney of
Little Max, pulled the letter m. “We talked about m as the shape of
the waves on the sea, of sound waves, and of mountains,” McCartney
recalls about the pair’s first meeting. They agreed that she
would write about the m and send the words to Hyland before he
left for vacation.
Unfortunately, she missed the deadline. “I read books about
letters. I put
em,
m, and
alphabet into Google and found all kinds of
interesting things. I collected pages of notes and facts about the
letter, but when it came time to send off the copy, I realized Angus
had long since departed and I had missed my first deadline.” She
put in a quick, slightly panicked call to Pentagram and was told to
boil everything down to four sentences and send them to Hyland.
“The day he got back, the following words arrived: ‘The text is
perfect for inspiring a visual response. Let’s leave it complete. It
will take me a week or two to come up with a suitable design.’”
The poster is a visual counterpoint of the powerful geometric
shape of m, and soft undulating waves drawn with a ballpoint pen,
while McCartney’s copy provides a strong, horizontal foundation
for the two contrasting images. The end result is commanding—
and remarkably elegant.
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