1,000 words paint a picture

I was recently invited to contribute to a typically interesting project by design company The Chase. It’s a series of promotional posters, postcards and t-shirts for photographer Paul Thompson, all of which feature absolutely no photography.

Instead, each canvas is made up of exactly 1,000 words inspired by an image in Paul’s online portfolio. There are four pieces in total, written by Ben Casey and Lionel Hatch of The Chase, alongside me and freelance writer Jim Davies. They make a smart set of postcards...

...and t-shirts (if you don't mind someone staring intently at your chest for five minutes).

For my piece, I wanted to make a genuine attempt to convey an image in words, so that you’d have a good chance of picturing it when you’re done (and so you would feel drawn to Paul’s website to see how close you were).

At the same time, I wanted to highlight the comical impossibility of conveying a picture through language, because we all respond to them so differently. A picture is never just about how it looks, but what it makes you think and feel.

Here’s what I wrote (click image to enlarge).

You can view the picture on Paul’s site, which is the point of the whole exercise.

Comments

[Miranda Dickinson]

I love this idea. I'm a firm believer in the power of words to evoke images and it's wonderful to see this in action.

The t-shirt might be a good thing to wear back-to-front when travelling on the underground so that the people behind you have something other than the tube map to read!