Poetry On The Rapid

Celebrating 50 years of support to the Arts and Humanities with the community

Poetry On The Rapid is a project sponsored by Grand Valley State University as part of a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the National Endowment for The Arts and National Endowment for Humanities Research Grants. Among many different events, I was requested to design a series of six placards featuring local Grand Rapids poets and their written pieces.

Despite unique in their overall composition, each composition is connected visually to the other by a few elements: 1- the project lockup on its left side, 2- the same typographical family, 3- a rotated picture plane that abstracts poem visuals and becomes a visual delight surrounding the typography.

The pieces were printed in polystyrene and a pair of poems were displayed in every bus in the city of Grand Rapids Transit System, known as The Rapid, that became part of the project name.

Client Liaison: Patricia Clark and Virginia Jenkins
Graphic Design: Vinicius Lima
Poems written by: Patricia Clark, Chris Haven, Amorak Huey, W. Todd Kaneko, L.S. Klatt and Mursalata Muhammad