Chosen Poems & Images

I have decided to use Autumn poems for my final idea, I have also decided not to take my own photographs as it could be difficult setting some of them up, even though I have decided this I still would like to look at the season Autumn. Having spent a lot of time looking at various poems and various images and matching them up so that they will come across to the audience well, I have finally decided on the following:

Reading outdoors between pages

a dry leaf

Autumn mist

slipping and sliding towards winter

 Dry leaf

now brittle with frost

 Leaves raked in soft piles multicoloured crispy mounds

autumns trampoline

 Gust of wind

tired leaf lets go

 Falling to the ground

I watch a leaf settle down in a bed of brown

Below are a few fonts that I could use in my design work:

Haiku Poems

At first I thought it might be nice to create a Summer Haiku poems book, but then realised I wouldn't be able to take pictures of the plants related to summer as it is February.  I have looked at spring, winter and autumn haiku, and also a mixture of all of the seasons. Here are a few that I like below, which I will be choosing six from including ones by Etsujin, Natsume Soseki, Basho and Charles De Lint:


Falling to the ground
I watch a leaf settle down
in a bed of brown


Everything I touch with tenderness
alas, pricks like a bramble


The crow has flown away swaying
in the evening sun
a leafless tree


Light of the moon moves west
flowers shadows creep eastward


A spring bee crawls out from the tulip
at closing time


The sun shines warmly
the dragonfly watches me planting my basil


Sick and feverish in the gleam of cherry blossoms
I keep shivering


Summer grasses
all that remains of soldiers' dreams


Even leaves don't move
awesome is the summer grove


How much I desire! inside my little satchel
the moon, and flowers!


Bush clover in blossom waves
without spilling a drop of dew


I wait for the sun to go down
there is nothing to do in this town
with the grass and trees all brown
it is difficult to escape the frown


Covered with the flowers
instantly id like to die in this dream of ours!


Over the wintry forest
winds howl
in rage with no leaves to blow


Scent of plum blossoms on the misty mountain path
a big rising sun


Winter garden
the moon thinned to a thread
insects singing


Autumn moonlight
a worm digs silently into the chestnut


Floating lily pads
hide frogs croaking
at circles of rain


Leaves raked in soft piles multicoloured crispy mounds
autumns trampoline


Newly sprouting buds begin to show their colours
cherry blossom time


Toad stools springing up
wet grass and leaves inviting
poisonous interest


Violet sweet scent wafting on the soft breezes
announcing springtime


Autumn Haiku Poems


Thick bramble bushes
lost desiccated apple
crows cry in slate sky


Dry leaf
now brittle with frost


Reading outdoors
between pages
a dry leaf


Gust  of wind tired leaf lets go


Ruined church
leaves fall
among the weeds


Autumn mist slipping and sliding
towards winter


Weekend afternoon
red leaves skip down the street behind the kids


Frosty mist
the spiders decorated the cherry tree


Spring Haiku Poems


Her hair loose in the spring breeze
a weeping willow


Morning sun
at the other end of the garden chairs in semicircle


Garden of red roses dark
forbidden climbing trellis and gable


Heron hunched in a net of shadows


House of white roses
heavy headed tossed on the breeze


After work stress relief
dirt under my fingernails
trash can filled with weeds


Afternoon delight
purple globe thistle
sprouted in pink dianthus


Endless rain
the sudden scent of roses


Winter Haiku Poems


Dark clouds lace fingers to black
away the sun spears of purple crocus


Valentines day
a pink bud on the quince tree


Frost this morning and a cold wind
scatters leaves like broken promises


This I know for sure
animals live under our skin
secret, waiting


Coffee and tea on a winter day
tea for you
the other for me


On a grey solstice day
crows, thin sunlight
restless spirits in synchronised flight
writing wishes in the sky


The bare limbs of the trees shover in the wind
and speak in semaphore


Black squirrel under the spruce trees
searching out his cache of fall seeds


You cant trust the sun this time of year
its bright light holds a bitter cold


Little cat looking out the window for rabbits
sees only the snow


A familiar landscape stands revealed
as the snow melts away


Cat tiptoeing along the top of the fence
circus act on this frosty morn


Even though I could still create a summer Haiku book by using photography that already exists, I would really like to try taking my own photographs, so I will probably create either an Autumn Haiku booklet or a Winter one with six images and the Haiku poem in typography to go with each image. If I decide not to take photographs, here are some images that could work well with the poems that I have looked at.

Autumn mist

slipping and sliding towards winter

Falling to the ground

I watch a leaf settle down in a bed of brown

I wait for the sun to go down

there is nothing to do in this town

with the grass and trees all brown

it is difficult to escape the frown

 Ruined church

leaves fall

among the weeds

Floating lily pads

hide frogs croaking

at circles of rain

Thick bramble bushes

last desiccated apple

crows in slate sky

After work stress relief

dirt under my fingernails

trash can filled with weeds

 Frosty mist

the spiders decorated the cherry tree

Morning sun

at the other end of the garden chairs in semicircle

Cat tiptoeing along the top of the fence

circus act on this frosty morn

Toadstools springing up

wet grass and leaves inviting

poisonous interest

Design Solutions

Having looked at other pieces of typography and garden related design work, here are a few possible ideas that I could choose from:

• Informative posters - schools - science, doctors Surgeries (medicine related), festivals, fairs, shows
• Drugs leaflet - process of drugs with images, diagrams/flow charts
• Magazine, font cover, double page spreads
• T-shirts, postcards, maps, calendars
• Booklet, photographs, illustrations, web design, japanese artwork/gardens
• Book - poetry, music, religion/spiritual, paintings, slide shows, metaphors, dandelion seeds
• Typographic family trees, poisonous but beautiful flowers - smell in type etc
• T.V shows - Weeds, Breaking bad (Drug related American t.v. shows - design work of covers etc
• The outdoors - Ray Mears, Bear Grylls, garden tools, adverts etc
• The four seasons
• Animals

After thinking about possible design solutions for this project, I have decided to design a book of Haiku which will include photographs of flowers/plants that I will take myself and a Haiku poem that matches well with the image.  I will use a suitable typeface and combine this with the photo to create a page of the booklet.  I need to make sure that my images do not overpower the typography as I need this to be the main focal point.  I may go for a really elegant style or possibly a quite bold/bright modern style.  Below are a few examples of Haiku that may help me when designing my own.  Some are just text and others are a mixture of media's. These may also help me to come up with a layout for my designs too.

Haiku is a poetic form and a type of poetry from the Japanese culture. Haiku combines form, content, and language in a meaningful, yet compact form. Haiku poets, write about everyday things. Many themes include nature, feelings, or experiences. Usually they use simple words and grammar. The most common form for Haiku is three short lines. The first line usually contains five syllables, the second line seven syllables, and the third line contains five syllables. Haiku doesn't rhyme. A Haiku must "paint" a mental image in the reader's mind. This is the challenge of Haiku - to put the poem's meaning and imagery in the reader's mind in only 17 syllables over just three lines of poetry. Japanese Haiku poems are very different from haiku poems in English. You can express a lot more ideas with 17 English syllables than with 17 Japanese syllables. This difference isn't present only in haiku poems, this differance come from people who translate Western musicals to Japanese. A large part of the art of haiku poems is expressing an idea in the limited environment. Since the English Haiku poems are allowed more degrees of freedom than their Japanese counterpart, they're playing a different game. In Japanese, one noun and a connective phrase will easily take up five syllables; in English, short sentences using common words often fits in five syllables. Here are a few examples of Haiku:

As the wind does blow

        Across the trees, I see the

                Buds blooming in May.

It’s cold—and I wait

For someone to shelter me

And take me from here.

Everything I touch

        with tenderness, alas,

                  pricks like a bramble.

                         The crow has flown away

         swaying in the evening sun,

a leafless tree.

Falling to the ground,

          I watch a leaf settle down

                 In a bed of brown.

  

                        Light of the moon

            Moves west, flowers' shadows

Creep eastward.

I think it would be best to choose my Haiku poems first before I take my photographs, I will choose around 6 poems that could work and that will make a really interesting photograph. This book will be suitable for young adults and upwards and will interest people who love nature, plants etc and english literature, design and typography.

Typography

Typography, the art of printing from movable type. The term typographer is today virtually synonymous with a master printer skilled in the techniques of type and paper stock selection, ornamentation, and composition. Before the development of typography, related arts flourished for centuries. Scribes in ancient Egypt and the Middle East perfected the craft of writing on papyrus scrolls and clay tablets. Hellenistic and Roman makers of books developed the art, which reached a peak of aesthetic perfection in the exquisite illuminated manuscripts of the Middle ages. The first European typographers imitated these manuscripts, but the introduction of metal types in the 15th century brought about a radical transformation. Crisp and uncompromising, metal types imposed new standards of composition. A highly conservative art, modern typography adheres closely to tradition. Since legibility is of the utmost importance, the forms that print most legibly are retained. Now created on computers, new typographic styles (type faces) continue to develop, to suit myriad uses in the design of advertisements, posters, newspapers, greeting cards, almanacs, and fine books.


Below are some examples of typography, including just type or with illustrations/photography, that I think could help when designing my work, most include gardens/plants or have a nature theme to them.

Below is some fashion work that I quite like as each page has a different letter, ultimately spelling the word garden.  I also really like the seasons booklet (The Forest Year) after this, I may consider designing some kind of booklet which shows off typography in an elegant but informative way.

I really like the illustration work used in the below piece, and the colour and typeface work really well together as a whole.