"When collaborating with multiple artists it’s important to be fluid and not hold on to any one element or idea too rigidly, because then other elements will either have to work around that, or the project will feel out of sync."
Hayley Burns in a graphic designer based in Vancouver (soon Toronto again). Hayley pulled all the different elements together, the poems, the archival documents, and the artwork into the bold, clean and lyrical final product.
I grew up in Greek town in Toronto, and have been living in Vancouver for the past 10 years. I’m an independent designer and art director, and the core of my practice is visual identity and website design, although I enjoy working on many different types of design. Being a business owner means my personal life and work life are often synonymous, but if I’m not working on client projects I love creating in all capacities — printmaking, bookmaking, photography, and collaging, to name a few. I’m also a huge animal lover, a loyal friend, an admirer of anything vintage, and reality TV is my guilty pleasure.
I’ve always loved drawing and painting but never wanted to make that my career — I didn’t think I was good enough to be a fine artist, but I also found the open-ended nature of making art daunting. I thrived with parameters to work around, or a problem to solve. I also enjoyed too many different creative practices to specialize in one.
I went to an arts high school where I was introduced to digital art and design at a pretty early age for the time. Graphic design wasn’t really a mainstream career path that many high school kids were exposed to as an option — advertising maybe, but that never appealed to me. I was lucky to be introduced to graphic design around grade 10 through my teachers and some family members, and it just clicked for me. I knew I wanted to go to university for design, and worked towards that goal. It took me a while to understand how I wanted to learn design, and in what environment, but I got there in the end.
My taste is for bold design — confident use of messaging, imagery, type, and colour, with open layouts and unexpected elements. I’m always drawn to 1960s and 70s graphic design with gridded layouts, very expressive type, flat shapes, and vivid, sometimes dissonant, colour combinations.
But in my own work, I don’t have a really defined aesthetic because the projects I work on require their own visual approaches, rather than applying a certain look or style. I also think visual style should be driven by concept, whether it’s something quite delicate or bold, sparse or dense, vivid or monochrome — it needs to tie in to the central idea or positioning of the work. This is why I enjoy visual identity work, because when the process is done right, the look has a foundation that it can always refer to.
There’s a roster of design studios and type foundries internationally that I admire and love to see what they’re creating. Seeing the work of other designers is always great encouragement to keep pushing the limits with every project. Also just poking around the internet on Pinterest or design sites like Type in Use, Awwwards, The Brand Identity. And looking beyond graphic design at art, architecture, film, photography, sculpture, fashion, etc., fuels my creativity.
I usually start by familiarizing myself with the field that the client or project is in. I also look up the competitive landscape and see what the common threads are (usually to try and avoid). This search is usually done on the internet, but sometimes I may call up people who are connected to the industry to pick their brain, or look into books, films, exhibitions, and other sources for inspiration. Just depends on the project really.
I start every project by listening to the story that exists so far, and the wants and needs of the client and any other parties that are involved, not as a prescription, but to gather intel.
The next stage is to get ‘stuck in’ with the problem at hand, the content and materials, and get my head around what is really needed to communicate the work. It’s a process that looks a bit different for every project, but generally once I start iterating in sketch form, paths to the solution start to appear. There’s often multiple concepts or solutions that are working and I follow those leads until they hit a wall, or something else outshines it. I often think that the solutions uncover themselves, I just need to do the work to clear away the noise.
Once a concept is found, presenting to the project stakeholders is a crucial step — I must illustrate that it will work in different applications, and inspire the clients to see what their project could become. It can be challenging because people start out saying they want to be bold, but when it comes to committing to something new they often start trying to compromise certain aspects. The designer’s role is to encourage bravery and prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it is the right way forward (and it can feel like a court case at times! haha).
That’s not to say that feedback won’t be accepted — revisions are inevitable, and help strengthen the work — but the integrity of a concept must be upheld. Once the client signs off on the direction, then the process of executing it can begin. The balance of ironing out the details and maintaining the conceptual vision continues as we design each touchpoint and roll out the project.
When collaborating with multiple artists it’s important to be fluid and not hold on to any one element or idea too rigidly, because then other elements will either have to work around that, or the project will feel out of sync. Continue to respond to ideas that others are putting forward with concepts that create stronger connections between the works, and let go of the ideas that are no longer finding a fit within the project.
With so much creative output to bring together in this project, I found my role became both curator — having an editing eye and only infusing more design ideas if they supported the works — and composer — allowing certain elements to be louder than others so that it wasn’t all one volume, and creating a visual rhythm of peaks and valleys.
Working with Margot’s writing and Oksana’s paintings, it was a dance between respecting the intention of the artwork — not manipulating it in ways that change the meaning — but also exploring and experimenting with unexpected treatments. Lots of iteration is needed to feel out the spectrum, looking at treatments that are quite minimal and simple, as well as pushing it to abstraction, and then find the balance of what feels right — what is interesting but not distracting from the work.
I kept folders with all of the original assets I received, and then combed through and made copies of things that I wanted to start working with and editing, and created new folders with them. I’d go back and pull out more as needed, but always keep the originals untouched so I could reference back anytime. And keeping notes during my conversations with all of the contributors was important.
It was a practise of adding and removing ingredients, playing with it until it felt right, and ensuring that the elements weren’t competing with each other. Editing was about keeping a critical eye, and asking if the element supported the rest of the piece or was an unconnected addition, and simplifying whenever possible.
I think Aaron and I had a good balance for this project because he crafted most of the nuanced details, and I helped the high level visual storyline with solutions for connecting different ideas. Together we were able to cover a lot, and it felt like a relay race at times — working on an aspect and then handing it off to each other, and continuing to evolve it. Aaron is great to work with because he has so many creative ideas, but isn’t precious about them.
It was a different type of project for me because it was so layered with meaning and visual elements to work with, and it evolved through many different phases. At times it was a very challenging puzzle, and I loved that because it goes back to what I love about design — problem solving. It exercised different parts of my workflow than a typical design project. It was a cyclical process, more fluid, and it strengthened that ability to let ideas come and go as it evolved. I certainly learned a lot about creativity from working with the materials from the other contributors. It was a really inspiring journey.
I’d love to do an exhibition design — the branding, environmental graphics, wayfinding, catalogue, microsite, and everything else that would go with it. I’d also love to do a big, hardcover coffee table book. And I’ve always thought a food truck would be fun to design.
Purchase a copy of anglepoise at Daed’u Books https://www.aflaflafl.com/store/anglepoise
Connect with Hayley @hayleyburnsdesign and www.hayleyburns.ca
]]>"I believe the books have their own ways of finding [collaborators]. My work is to be … available."
Aaron Friend-Lettner is an artist, photographer, writer, publisher. There is nothing he can't do. Aaron was at the helm of the project that is anglepoise.
I’m an artist, among other things. I got an award in 2016 to publish a book called Doorways. This marked an entrance into book-making as a form of ritual and healing. The book is dedicated to the past for this reason.
Root first, then branch. I try to really feel the body, the language, the texture. Books are very much alive for me, so it’s all very sensuous. I make my way around a project in circles––like tuning a drum.
I walk a lot. I climb trees. And I read, listen to music, play cards. I’m a bit of a hermit, and so often my companion is silence. That’s when I feel the most … available. Inspiration for anglepoise came from the land. I wanted to honour the rivers and trees; the stones and sand; the muck. I was born here and I love this place very much.
anglepoise was a journey into Margot’s world; Oliver Schroer was a guide.
Margot was very trusting; she let me do all sorts of wacky things with her poems. She ok’d the final proofs but didn’t actually see the book in-hand until it was printed, so I was able to sneak in a surprise for her––rubbings of her favourite oak tree.
I believe the books have their own ways of finding [collaborators]. My work is to be … available.
Margot’s writing is so visual; a lot of the cues were already in the text. The rest came from Elizabeth’s diaries: the font colour, handwriting, paintings. And from Oksana. I chose the binding style initially for its name, dos-à-dos (“back-to-back”). I saw Margot and Elizabeth walking the same shorelines on different sides of time, backs touching.
[Working with Hayley] felt like an apprenticeship. I learned a lot by studying Hayley’s work. She also helped me let the book go. That was hard to do. As for my practices … rest, ritual, revival. And always appreciation. Many hands touch these books––they’re filled with love.
anglepoise is syncretism. It was a lot of work to bring so many elements into balance. The book has a distinct Margotness ... playful and cryptic and curious. Reading her work is not always easy, or even comfortable; she goes right to the edges of nonsense. The beauty is a … way in.
Purchase your copy of anglepoise at Daed’u Books https://www.aflaflafl.com/store/anglepoise
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Margot Lettner is a writer, poet and editor. Her latest poetry book, anglepoise, was released earlier this year. This Q&A delves deeper into Margot's process and what it took to bring anglepoise to life.
Purchase your copy of anglepoise at Daed’u Books https://www.aflaflafl.com/store/anglepoise
The first poem I wrote, I was about eight. It was a haiku - I found it recently in one of my father's notebooks when I was clearing out my parents’ home, he’d handwritten it. He bought me my first book of poems, Poems To Grow On. It was a “comfort book” of my childhood, I loved it and still have it. I wrote a lot when I was a kid and into my teens. And then, for a very long time, I wrote for a living but it wasn’t literary writing. Coming back to poetry is, for me, coming full circle.
It starts with a word or phrase, something I’ve read or overheard. Sometimes I actually misread, and it's the misspelled or portmanteau word that I write down. I read a lot when I’m writing - it’s like listening to music, and for me poems are soundings - and I’ve learned that what I read tends to suggest itself - one book, author, or idea leads to another. It’s field work and, like writing, it passes through me on its way from somewhere to somewhere.
I tend to have a couple of projects happening at once, co-existing in different stages. This was advice I got before my first residency, to take a few things along because the thing you plan to write may not, in fact, be the thing you can write. Having other work also means I have a place to park ideas or lines - I often have poem titles but no poem, but at least I’ve set down a beginning.
With anglepoise, it was my main focus. The research and writing were so intensive that leaving off always meant a long way back in. For the poem suite after husk, I also wrote 10 poems to pair with the 10 erasure poems. Each double-page spread holds a pair, like the erasure poem “Katherine” and its companion “creve-coeur”, or the pair “cold, fell” and “grief, his wife.” I really had to stay in this space for these poems to walk with each other.
My work is very connected to place, to particular groundscapes and watersheds in southern Ontario. So field work is a big part of my practice, I'm very fortunate to be close to the Humber, Mimico and Etobicoke watersheds, the Black Oak savannas. It’s how I refresh and re- engage, going out with the binoculars or snowshoes. I’ve also learned to allow work to evolve and breathe over time. Sometimes when I leave a poem that’s not working, when I come back to it, it’s worked on itself.
I do a lot of rewrites. I think this is something I learned from my writing life outside poetry - there comes a time you just have to let go. No piece is ever finished. And I find this exciting, that a poem has infinite room.
About 10 years ago I went to an architecture festival in Toronto. There was this passage on an exhibition card from a diary written by this woman, and she talked about sitting on the banks of the Humber River at night in her canvas tent, reading Palladio by candlelight, and I just thought Who is this person? And this person was Elizabeth Simcoe, and the passage was from the journals she wrote in the 1790s when she lived in what is now Ontario. And that set me to find out who this person was, and to find and read her diaries.
I wanted to read Elizabeth’s original journals, and I was fortunate to find very supportive staff at Archives Ontario. It’s very special to work with archives, to be with old books, to see their marbled covers, cotton-pulp pages, their 220 years of living, to get that intimate contact.
And then when you open them, you see all these interleaves, the bits and pieces that she left inside - shopping lists, reminder lists, little scraps of drawings and watercolors, scraps of writing, the fact that she would write down the page and then up the side of the page. And you know, you don't see that in digital reproductions online. Studying the originals suggested elements of the book design. anglepoise is printed in brown ink because that’s the colour Elizabeth’s handwriting has aged to. Its pages have splotches because that’s what time and weather and boat crossings have done to her journals.
Voice and representation were also challenges. The journals are intimate writings. They are also documents created by a settler, the wife of a British colonial administrator. Elizabeth’s voice felt very close by as I wrote. And so many of the poems weave her words with mine, hers appearing in lighter print or in her actual handwriting.
But, it’s also 220 years later. The poem suite after husk, which emerges from erasing all 10 chapters of Elizabeth’s published journals into 10 poems, so her words still speak but in different voices, explores an iterative process of re-composition. Because I explore how place, landscape and memory are layered over time, and come from a settler heritage, I have to ask how to approach Canadian settler archives within the counterpoint of Indigenous archives and experience, how to evolve an ethic of care and challenge. What do we do with ourselves on this land that became an eventness of whiteness?
Letting Elizabeth’s journals speak by using erasure to create the poem suite, after husk. Some of the poems rewrote themselves 10 or 15 times - each time slightly differently, sometimes quite differently, like the text was having different conversations. And that just seemed to reflect the fluidity of time, the fluidity of memory, and my own unfinished work of understanding colonization.
The poem ampersand is another kind of fluid conversation. I had read around Elizabeth’s century, 1750-1850, there’s all this amazing context on every historical level - including how cooking signals class revolution - and when I was at the Vermont Studio Centre a colleague suggested I write a list poem. That list became ampersand and recipes became the thread that binds the cast of voices together. These are European voices of the Enlightenment and the age of discovery - the cultural ground of Elizabeth’s world. But with 50 other voices, it would be a different poem.
And making anglepoise a collaboration among artists, and across generations. Two writers. Two painters. Three walkers of the same watersheds, Oksana handmaking inks from materials she finds there. Hayley’s idea of the folding cover and vellum band. Aaron imagining how loss, discovery and displacement might move over the physical space of the book, each journal a different single or multiple voice as each hand - Elizabeth, me, then Oksana - enters.
Words are wonderful, I love them, but images add what words simply can’t express. If you set drawings and words among each other, much as you might do if you’re curating a show in a room, you're opening a space where different media describe and counterpoint lived or imagined experience. Their fields of perception, of expression, set up all these invitations to open out.
When I look at Oksana’s charcoal drawings for the long poem ampersand, which are bark rubbings from an old oak tree called Great White, I see in their textures, in their lines, the liminal nature of time.
anglepoise reminded me how much I underpin words with other ways of sensing. Colour, texture, space, sound. So making an art book is a natural, intuitive part of my exploration and practice.
I'm [...] feeling tremendous joy. To hold the book in my hands! To share it with people, hear what it makes them wonder about. The book’s design - its intimate journals, its faded type and watermarks, how it begins in one woman’s voice then adds other voices - I hope readers are curious, go back, explore and muse, which is a poet’s dream reader! And for me, it’s also time for a fresh start.
I’m early in some new work called A Place For the Time Being. It’s grounded in a 100-acre landscape that has an unusual history. Some is documented, some is suggestive. This small patch is really a deep well of bigger things. I'm seeing a series of short journals, each perhaps 10-15 poems, that appear randomly as the project unfolds.
Purchase your copy of anglepoise at Daed’u Books https://www.aflaflafl.com/store/anglepoise
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