Seattle Children's Hospital Poetry Broadside

For the past month, I have been honored to be a part of a project made possible by the School of Visual Concepts and Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools program. Sierra Nelson, a poet with WITS, is the poet in residence at the Seattle Children's Hospital, and has been working with kids there once a week helping to teach them poetry and writing. Sierra picked 12 poems from 12 different students to be turned into letterpressed broadsides by printers at SVC.

We went around the room to pick our poems, and I was lucky enough to end up with 12 year old Emma's gorgeous poem, which is a blessing dedicated to her brother Owen (who I later found out is also her bone marrow donor).

Because there was so much imagery in the words, I didn't want to add any additional imagery of my own. Instead, I decided to treat the poem typographically, and call out important phrases in color and wood type.

The first black layer is all hand-set lead type. I was so excited for the opportunity to hand-set, since I usually end up doing things with polymer. It's good to get some hand-setting practice!

The 12 broadsides will all be collated together into a beautiful portfolio designed by Bonnie Thompson Norman. To unify the different broadsides, we were to print the majority of the poster in black, and then add an accent color of either Process Blue, Process Yellow, or Warm Red (of course, we were allowed to do more than two, but we had to do at least one color).

I chose blue because though my instinct was yellow, I knew the blocks of text would probably start to look like bumble bee stripes.

I added some trans white to the blue, so it wouldn't be super bright.

The star in the middle of the last sentence was the biggest one in the shop, so to fill in the white space around it (and add the yellow I so desperately wanted!) I decided to do some post-printing spray paint to add a shine to the star. I had to make a jig to make sure the spray paint would be the same size each time.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how the poster turned out, and I hope it showcases Emma's poem in the best light possible! I can't wait for her to see it!

Emma (on the left), and her brother Owen. Before designing the poster, I had a short email exchange with Emma's father, and he sent me this photo of them. It really made the project hit home for me; I am so humbled by her strength, courage, and beautiful writing.