My first document

TREES

Selected, designed, and typeset by Seon Kim

Trees

Trees

Copyright © by Seon Kim

artd 444 Typographic Systems

Molly C. Briggs, Instructor

Spring 2024

School of Art & Design

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

John Lee Clark is an American deafblind poet, essayist, historian, and translator and an activist in the Protactile movement. His acclaimed How to Communicate: Poems, 2023, incorporates creative reflections on the Braille slate, prose poems, and “erasures” that reinterpret nineteenth-century poems and critique the limits of the canon.

Trees is an original re-setting of Clark’s poem “ Trees”.

This project was inspired by the pedagogical research of book designer and doctoral student Natalie F. Smith, with whom Professor Briggs has co-taught typography in past semesters.

6 Foreword

9 Trees

Foreword

With eloquence and insight, Clark invites us to attune our senses to the language of trees, a language that speaks not in words but in the rustle of leaves, the sway of branches, and the silent growth of roots. Drawing upon his own experiences and a deep well of knowledge, he unveils the secrets of tree communication, revealing a world of interconnectedness and symbiosis that mirrors our own.

Trees

I love trees that stay away from me. But when a leafy finger pokes my eye, I squint. I’m willing to dismiss it as an irony. A limb that knocks my head because I didn’t duck?

That turns my heart into a chainsaw.

This book was designed by Seon Kim, Set in to type by Seon Kim at University of Illinois, Urbana, Champaign, and Printed by Seon Kim.

Typeface used: Cheapines, Futura PT book and Medium