mrs eaves poster

mockup of both sides of the Mrs Eaves poster

Print Design

Mrs Eaves Poster

Objective

Mrs Eaves is a transitional serif typeface designed by Zuzana Licko of Emigre. The typeface is based on Baskerville with some more "feminine" curves and quirks added in, and named to honor one of the first women in graphic design and printmaking, Sarah Eaves. This poster design had a simple limitation: it must be double sided, with one side informational and the other conceptual.

  • Exhibited

  • Cressman Center for Visual Arts 2018

front (informational) side of the Mrs Eaves poster
back (conceptual) side of the Mrs Eaves poster

Concept

The informational side was relatively straightforward to design, as it made heavy use of a grid to inform the layout. The conceptual side, however, was more of a challenge. The final concept sought to unify the typeface's intentional design for print, its impressive number of ligatures, and its intent to honor women in graphic design.

handwritten note linking the idea of a negative space ligature to the visual concept of a newspaper print
image of the original nail polish version of the poster

Process

To create the conceptual side, the written content from the informational side was scaled up and printed out (as Mrs Eaves was designed for print). This printed out and pasted-together poster was then nearly entirely covered in pink nail polish, leaving only a ligature of "M" and "E" and the name they stand for, Mrs Eaves, in the negative space. On the informational side, where the ligatures are listed the "M" and "E" ligature is black, rather than pink, a faint echo of the conceptual side in a more ordered layout.



After the nail polished dried, the entire piece was scanned back into digital format by some cooperative (but confused) people at Staples and later printed on the final, double-sided poster.

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