“The impatient explorer invents a box in which all journeys must be kept” is a short poem by Kenneth Patchen. I interpreted it to be referring to someone frequently experiencing the feeling of wanderlust — wanting to explore the world, but lacking the money, the time off work, or even having to wait for travel to become safe again. I imagined this explorer to be a modern day travel influencer, hopelessly draining their bank account just for a photo op at a national park. They live in a city and feel trapped by the constant noise and lights, yearning to see a mountain ridge rather than the skyline. The box is not a literal box, but instead the explorer’s mind, so the explorer can only daydream about their escape out of the city and into the wild.
Roads and the claustrophobic buildings convey the implication of motion while also feeling stagnant. The bird’s eye view represents the freeing perspective the explorer is seeing in their mind’s eye as they daydream. The text is tight and blocky, similar to the feeling tall buildings can give to claustrophobic people.
I went through an iterative process to arrive at the final design, creating many sketches for different ideas. I rendered the imagery to be realistic while also being abstract, such as the distorted perspective and roads breaking the grid. The text was arranged on angles and curves to compliment the title text. The final design was printed on a large scale printer as a full size poster.
Poster Design, 2016. Adobe Illustrator & Adobe Photoshop.
