In my RISD class Newly Formed, I was tasked with making a poster with the letter U. Inspired by Zach Lieberman’s Land Lines, this poster connects rivers across the world to form that letter. The poster makes apparent that we, like rivers, are all intertwined.

The Intracoastal Waterway is a series of interconnected bodies of water, both natural and artificial, which was created to shield ships from the sometimes dangerous open ocean, making supply chains more reliable. This identity is formed out of squares with different water-like patterns, which can be turned and moved around to create thousands of different configurations. The identity can be used for data visualizations of water levels, pointing to the challenges created by climate change.

The identity can expand by putting the squares together. I created posters for different ports along the waterway, each with a unique color and featuring the port’s name and its mile number, which is used in logistics to identify different locations.

International US Roadtrip spells the word “Roadtrip” by tracing US roads in an old map. The word provides an opportunity for an imaginary journey that reflects on the relationship between language, space and time. Towns with international counterparts are highlighted in a Google Maps-inspired bubble with juxtaposed images of both locations, creating a third space that traverses the distance separating them. Just like the roads in the map connect the towns, those towns are connected through language and memory to others all over the world.

After reading Evicted by Matthew Desmond, I chose to design a poster for my Reframing the Poster class with Nancy Skolos. The final part of this assignment was to do a motion poster—in mind, the letters are disrupted and fall all over the place, in a metaphor of the upheaval that eviction causes for families.