For this assignment I choose the poem Nirvana by Charles Bukowski.

I first came across this poem through Tom Waits who does a rendition of it on one of his albums. What first stuck me about the poem was the sparse and simple narrative and the atmosphere he was able to evoke.

Nirvana by Charles Bukowski - image 1 - student project

The poem tells the story of a young man aimless wondering through life. He is riding a bus that stops at a small cafe in the hills. While there he feels a certain affinity with the place and the people in it. He describes that a "curious feeling swam through him that everything was beautiful there, that it would always stay beautiful there". I believe this is him possible passing through a state of nirvana as referenced by title. The driver of the bus tells the passengers that it time to board and the young man thinks "I'll just stay here", but then rises and leaves with the rest of the passengers. The poem ends with the young man feeling removed from the other passengers that "didn't notice the magic" as the bus drives off.

The poem describes those moments of transcendence that come by when they are least expected. It describes the futility of trying to hold on to them.

Nirvana by Charles Bukowski - image 2 - student project

The first two things that caught my attention in the poem were the setting and the state. The poem is set in a bus and a dinner, both place that are everyday and ordinary, but it describes passing through a state of Nirvana. So I set out to find a way to either combine or juxtapose these two things.

I started by introducing elements from the dinner. I tried designing the cover like a menu at a dinner, first with the entire poem, then with just the title and author. Neither of these worked as they didn't seem to have the right amount of text to read like a menu. I then tried using elements from the bus. Returning to the idea of the dinner I started playing around with the signage in front of the dinner.

Looking at the dinner and the bus I realised that they both shared a mid century art deco aesthetic. I chose to use the font Termina which felt like it had a hint of art deco without being overpowering. While doing research on cafe signs I remembered the work of
Ed Ruscha and his painting of the standard gas station. I then came across his paintings of everyday phrases superimposed over majestic landscapes.

Nirvana by Charles Bukowski - image 4 - student project

Ruscha's paintings have a mixture of the sublime and everyday that I was looking for. Taking inspiration from these I started placing the title over different backgrounds. I found an image similar to the scene described in the poem. I tried turning it into a half tone print, looking to find the sweet spot between legibility and abstraction. Then I added mood to it with a gradient map.

Nirvana by Charles Bukowski - image 7 - student project

After playing around with different options for a while I decided to use the original image unaltered. Its not the end result I thought that I would end up with but I'm happy with it none the less.

Nirvana by Charles Bukowski - image 8 - student project

Nirvana by Charles Bukowski - image 9 - student project

Blair Barclay

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