Kate Poe
PUBLICATION / EDITORIAL DESIGN
Ethereal Elegance: The Art of Shyama Golden
2023
110 pages, perfect bound
Ethereal Elegance is an artist monograph for Shyama Golden, a Sri-Lankan artist based in Los Angeles. The book incorporates the dream-like qualities of Golden’s work by using the playful, light sans-serif Mack alongside holographic endpaper. Sections include essays, plates, catalog entries, index, foreword, acknowledgements and various other pieces of front and back matter. I designed two separate covers for the book, a dust jacket and a holographic cover.
The book itself is about 110 pages cover to cover, perfect bound, with a full bleed frontispiece and section openers.
Breaking the Mold: Typography, Graphic Design, and Subversion
2023
90 pages, perfect bound
Breaking the Mold: Typography, Graphic Design, and Subversion is a collection of graphic design essays compiled during my editorial publication design class in fall 2023. The book explored different typographic solutions to handling essays with varying lengths, figures, captions, footnotes, and more. I settled on a single column layout with a standard 60 character measure. Type is set in Fieldwork, a contemporary and easy to read sans serif font designed by TipoType that combines geometric strokes with humanistic flair.
Features include: generous margins, navigational folios, bold textual openers, and a contrasting magenta spine that connects to the colors on the front cover
Thoughts on Thesis
2023
80 pages, perfect bound
The Thoughts on Thesis project, as the last part of my senior fall semester, is a project that combines research and previous design work as well as future ideas into a publication and Figma prototype to ease into my thesis project in the spring semester.
My content consisted of research posts from the semester, descriptions and photos of previous work, a design lexicon of collected quotes, design terms, and personal content, and thoughts on future projects.
The entire book is printed in red ink, with some pages near the end breaking into full color photos.
It is 80 pages long and perfect bound.
More information on the project here.
The Figma prototype can be viewed here.
Catalog of Influences
2023
160 pages, printed with Lulu
During my junior year of university, I designed and curated a publication on my personal design influences, including people, places, artists, artifacts, music, and more. Below are a series of spreads from the book itself, which was printed using Blurb.
I decided to incorporate my love of music throughout the book's design. The page numbers are timestamps denoting the page number, chapter, and section as well as pause/play icons. In the footers are running lyrics of songs highlighted in the chapter openers, a homage to whatever playlist guides the content. Throughout the book there are gradients in the inner margins to create depth and visualize sound. The grid system accommodates a large variety of content, including full bleed images, longform text, image/caption pairings, and music selection spreads. The book, in both content and layout, is colorful yet coordinated, playful yet comedic, and exploratory yet structured — a reference to my style as a graphic designer.
Know Your Words
Mental Health Campaign
2023
60 pages, spiral bound
Know Your Words is a mental health campaign focusing on the proper use of mental health terminology. The project was completed with Leena Jang. The campaign features a workbook, pocket dictionary, animation, stickers, and magnets. I completed the stickers, magnets, and animations, as well as the workbook portion of the project, a 60 page publication printed on thick cardstock designed to be drawn on and interacted with.
The workbook is divided into three sections that incorporate activities, notes, and puzzles to encourage active learning and engagement with the content. A pencil is attached to the spiral binding to make sure the reader is never without a writing utensil, so the book can be properly worked on.
The workbook has three sections, including crossword puzzles, word searches, articles, notes, animation frames, and mental health resources.