“Thương hải tang điền / bãi bể nương dâu” means seas turn into mulberry fields. It’s an old idiom about how violently and unexpectedly the world can change. Transformation, loss, cycles, fate.
(...)
Kìa thế cục như in giấc mộng,
Máy huyền vi mở đóng khôn lường!
Vẻ chi ăn uống sự thường,
Cũng còn tiền định khá thương lọ là.
Đòi những kẻ thiên ma bách chiết,
Hình thì còn bụng chết đòi nau!
Thảo nào khi mới chôn nhau,
Đã mang tiếng khóc bưng đầu mà ra!
Khóc vì nỗi thiết tha sự thế,
Ai bày trò bãi bể nương dâu?
Trắng răng đến thuở bạc đầu,
Tử, sinh, kinh, cụ làm nau mấy lần?
(...)
From "Cung Oán Ngâm Khúc" by Nguyen Gia Thieu
Cung ngam khuc is a famous poem by Nguyen Gia Thieu. The work is a lament of a palace maid, from the time she was loved until she was abandoned, expressing the sorrow of being imprisoned, lacking love and freedom. The work also sends the author's thoughts on time and philosophy of life. I intentionally chose the lines that include the phrase "bãi bể nương dâu" to explain the meaning of Thương hải tang điền for those who didn't know the idiom.
The first three images are experimental versions of the poster I designed ✨
I tried out different colour palettes and patterns (mulberry leaves and waves) just to see how the metaphor could shift visually.
ASESINA is a bold, unorthodox, allusive display typeface inspired by the enigmatic forms of orcas, reflecting their stark black-and-white contrast, rounded and massive silhouettes, and capturing both the elegance and the hidden quiet brutality of these powerful creatures.
It all starts from an old typeface on a book cover...
Honestly, I found that typeface weird and a bit... ugly, because some letters look like majuscules while others look like minuscules. It was my second option at the time, and I guess it was that weirdness of it that captivated me. It was both sharp and soft, elegant and ugly. Fate made me work with it.
I’ll probably explain the phrase I used in the poster in another post (👀), but one funny part was deciding which new letters should look lowercased or capitalised. A lowercase h next to a capital A? hideous 😭💀
As usual, I spent forever experimenting with composition. I made more than 15 versions, but the main structures were these three.
