Flax Poster Commissions

Flax, Litfest's publishing arm, has commissioned six writers, three poets, three prose writers, to write pieces for posters. Two (above, Annie Clarkson's Okarito and Jane Routh's Between) were chosen to be printed A1 and sold at the Litfest08 and sold online.


The others, including Ian Seed's Man (above top) and Maya Chowdhry (above) are available to read on line or download and print them at home.

So, if you are interesting in getting these for free (or purchasing the lovely printed versions) just click here (Jenn Ashworth's All Stood Together and Meg Peacocke's Paper Mirror above).



The project itself was quite interesting and difficult. I was determined to reflect rather than interpret the writing and to find something that helped to find meaning without dictating the meaning. And to be thrown six pieces of work at once, to try to work on all these ideas at once in a short period of time was quite tricky. And added to that, I was designing across three formats, A1 printed on a matte paper, A3 printed at home (oh the bother with colours) and for screen. All in all quite challenging and fun. I was fortunate to participate in the launch event for these posters at Litfest08. Jenn and Jane were there reading and then we had a good chat about the process of designing these. And one of the things that has come out of my conversations with people about the posters is that each one has been chosen as a favourite by at least a couple people and no one is more popular than any of the others. Which means that the final selection of the final two to print was really tricky. It will be interesting to see which ones are downloaded more.

Thanks to Sarah Hymas at Flax and the writers for the inspiration.