Project Brief: Choose the lyrics of a song and translate it into an expressive typographic composition. Final output — 18" x 24" poster.
The lyrics chosen for this project, "I can't take my mind off you", are from the song The Blower's Daughter by Damien Rice. The themes of heartbreak and yearning are represented in the song through a repetition of the single line in its chorus. In the same way, the lyric repeats itself in the poster. The typography is embroidered onto the poster, at first with precise obsession and eventually distorting as it travels off the edge. There is a lack of colour in the poster, much like the haze of a mind consumed and fitting for a mundane non-story like this.
Before he began making a living in music, Damien Rice worked in a call center making cold calls to households selling financial products like insurance and mortgages.
He hated it, of course.
One day, when a woman picked up and answered that her father was not at home, Rice decided to stay on the phone and talk to her. Every day after that, he called her during his shift and slowly fell in love with her.
Eventually, she stopped answering.
Determined to find her, Rice looked up her address from her phone number and took a bus to where she lived. He hid in the bushes and watched a young girl leave the house in a school uniform. As she called out, “bye mom!” he recognized her voice and realized that he had only been a source of entertainment for a girl on summer vacation.