Font Poem

The second sight project consisted of creating a font poem. The poem I chose to use was an excerpt from 'An American Prayer' by Jim Morrison. (With his poetry he went by James)
Included at the bottom is the entire poem. I suggest reading it :)

















This project was a lot of fun, it gave me a chance to learn how many different fonts, or typefaces, Photoshop offers. I had a few difficulties when designing the layout of the words. There are so many approaches to a project such as this, so many possibilities and so many ideas.

The first draft of my font poem looked absolutely nothing like the final. I am much much happier with the finished product. I must have tried almost every single font choice for each word. The fonts I ended up using are:

• Orator Std
• Kabel LT Std
• Myraid Pro
• Shelley Script LT Std
• Bermuda LP Std
• Flood Std
• Zapfino

I tried to keep a sense of formality with the less significant words and used Kabel LT Std for those. My favorite font was the one I used to recognize Jim Morrison with, Zapfino. Favorite font for favorite poet. The font had a very clear and beautiful script, just as Morrison.

I ran into a few difficulties when doing my font poem, but of course there was a simple fix. At first I was only working with two layers. Once I began to create a layer for more and more words it began to be more fun. A sense of perfection came upon me to have each and every word placed exactly where I saw fit. By the end, I ended up with a layer for almost each word of the poem. I really, really enjoyed this project. It was not much of a struggle, but it gave me the chance to deliver the words of someone else, in MY way. One thing I wish was more involved was color!

An American Prayer
By: James Morrison

Do you know the warm progress under the stars?
Do you know we exist?
Have you forgotten the keys to the Kingdom?
Have you been borne yet & are you alive?
Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests
[Have you forgotten the lessons of the ancient war]
We need great golden copulations
The fathers are cackling in trees of the forest
Our mother is dead in the sea
Do you know we are being led to slaughters by placid admirals
& that fat slow generals are getting obscene on young blood
Do you know we are ruled by T.V.
The moon is a dry blood beast
Guerilla bands are rolling numbers in the next block of green vine
amassing for warfare on innocent herdsmen who are just dying
O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art & perfect our lives
The moths & atheists are doubly divine & dying
We live, we die & death not ends it
Journey we more into the Nightmare