A Motivational Poster: The Abyss Gazing Back | Bee Artless
How does one design a motivational poster using abstract graphics and a short philosophical message?
Nietzsche said, “If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you.”
We think it is more interesting that Camus effectively said, “…then tell the abyss to fuck off.”
We wanted our first design to express this fundamental tenet of Absurdism.
Absurdism is the radical idea that humans can triumph over the lack of meaning in our universe. If there is no sense in the universe, we can certainly invest some into it.
I also wanted to build a first design which paid homage to our Bauhaus influences. Abyss starts off the BA stable of designs from a very abstract space. We used basic shapes: circles, rectangles, and triangles besides a few rough brushstrokes and grungy patterns.
Words + Seals
Text slices from the standard Abyss posters:
The text reads, “When the abyss stares back, tell it to fuck off.” The word gazes sounds a bit weird in this context, so we replaced it with stares.
The seals read the full name of the design, followed by the logomark and the brand name pyramid.
Absurdism in Words for a Motivational Poster
How does one go about investing meaning into the senseless void of our existence on a habitable rock flying through space? Through one’s actions. Here, we are silent on exactly what actions one might perform to go about the act of investing meaning because art, after all, doesn’t tell people what to do. That is the province of parenting, ideology, and other forms of hierarchy. Art simply asks questions.
Future versions of the Abyss design will apply texts which exhort the reader to commit to some form of action. The idea of not giving up is a personal favourite of mine, which readers might consider a hint. We will be asking the Bee Artless community to suggest how these designs can be modulated to express more ideas, so please stay tuned!
Bauhaus Influences in Graphics
The Bauhaus angle will be obvious to some. At Bee Artless, we appreciate the simplicity and abstraction of basic shapes and primary colours. While we use off-primary colours, we also use off-secondary colours. The triangles, circles, and rectangles are not perfect, but rather broken by jagged edges and grungy holes in them.
Buy ‘Abyss’ Motivational Poster and More
Circle Poster: On the Abyss Gazing Back in Cirlces
Rectangle Poster: On the Abyss Gazing Back in Rectangles
Triangle Poster: On the Abyss Gazing Back in Triangles
Circle iPhone Case: Abyss Circle iPhone Case
Rectangle iPhone Case: Abyss Rectangle iPhone Case
Triangle iPhone Case: Abyss Triangle iPhone Case
Circle Galaxy Case: Abyss Circle Samsung Case
Rectangle Galaxy Case: Abyss Rectangle Samsung Case
Triangle Galaxy Case: Abyss Triangle Samsung Case
Telling the abyss to fuck off is a good starting point for building an ethics of sincerity. We need to go beyond the vacuous nonsense of postmodernism, its embrace of the abyss within. Hopefully, this will work.
Originally published at https://beeartless.com on May 21, 2019. By Akshay Vaidya
