Graphic design, illustration,
and lettering in Chicago

Ninth Letter 11.1 cover poster with dripping title type over a scattered field of pale blue limb silhouettes

NINTH LETTER 11.1 2014


Ninth Letter is the award-winning literary arts journal at the University of Illinois—it is produced as a collaborative effort between the University's Creative Writing Program and the School of Art + Design.


For issue 11.1, I worked with a small team on a set of promotional posters. The three of us each designed our own individual posters based on pieces included in the journal. We also collaborated on a larger poster that was printed across the backs of all three individual posters. To create it, we wrote down various things mentioned throughout the journal on slips of paper, and we drew them from a hat in pairs then illustrated the pairs as combined objects.


In addition to the posters, I also designed the table of contents for this issue.


Issue 11.1 was designed under the art direction of Brian Wiley and Maurice Meilleur.

Individual poster spelling ‘NINTH LETTER’ in bold pink letters woven through dozens of hand-drawn line icons

Collaborative poster

Poster built around a giant numeral 9 rendered as tangled illustrated rope, with ‘the letter’ set in pink type Pink poster with playful navy and blush frog-like creatures crawling over bold white ‘NINTH LETTER’ letters

Individual posters by YooJin Hong (left) and Kiki Kolakowski (right)

Press check photo of freshly printed Ninth Letter posters laid across a print shop table Close-up press check of the line-drawn object icons and a pink block letter mid-print

Press check at OSP in Bloomington, IL

Open shipping box packed with printed Ninth Letter 11.1 journals showing the limb-pattern cover Sketchbook page of pencil concepts exploring hand and limb motifs for the Ninth Letter 11.1 cover Sketchbook page of pencil drafts for the dripping ‘NINTH LETTER 11.1’ title lettering Two hands holding open the Ninth Letter table of contents spread, its entries linked by red lines