CASE STUDY: KAFKA EXHIBITION POSTER
Poster design for an exhibition on Franz Kafka (1883-1924), German speaking
Jewish author from Prague.
Rather than depicting Kafka himself, I decided to capture the “Kafkaesque”
using type only. The term Kafkaesque comes from Kafka’s depictions of alienation, anxiety and powerlessness of the 20th century individual. The term applies to bizarre bureaucratic situations in which the individual is crushed by invisible authority
and is unable to understand the nonsensical scenarios he finds himself in.
I captured the suspense and ambiguity in my poster designs.
For the first poster, I focused on Kafka’s handwriting. It is expressive and dynamic
and holds more of Kafka’s spirit than his portraits. I vectorised his signature
and layered it onto a manuscript of “Letter to Father”.
For the second poster, I used the iconic bug image, related to Kafka’s most famous “Metamorphosis”. I designed few different bugs using type and punctuation only, first one using a typeface based on Kafka’s handwriting, secondly using a simple serif type
and finally settling for the Art Nouveau-like decorative type.
