Designing Fiction
The rural Appalachians of east Tennessee surround my childhood home. Here, storytelling is considered a serious art form and a method for cultural preservation. Many of the tales I grew up hearing at storytelling festivals were valued not for their plots (which were often nonsensical), but for the method in which they were conveyed.
For the past fifteen years, I have created work that seeks to seamlessly integrate design with storytelling. My focus is not just on the words, but also on the emotion created from the typography, the nostalgia invoked from the way I manipulate the media, the metaphor apparent in the way the page is laid out. My design decisions mimic the storyteller’s ebb and flow of voice, her dress, her movements on stage.
