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Enigma,  | International Design Awards Winners
Enigma,  | International Design Awards Winners
Enigma,  | International Design Awards Winners
Enigma,  | International Design Awards Winners
Enigma,  | International Design Awards Winners
Enigma,  | International Design Awards Winners
Enigma,  | International Design Awards Winners
Enigma,  | International Design Awards Winners
Enigma,  | International Design Awards Winners
Enigma,  | International Design Awards Winners
Enigma,  | International Design Awards Winners

Enigma

Lead DesignersKevin Lam
Prize(s)Honorable Mention
Entry Description

‘Enigma’ is a design response to the International Society of Typographic Designers 2015 Student Assessment brief, ‘The Rhetoric of Ekphrasis’. The brief required a typographic solution that interprets how an ekphrasis, a written commentary of a piece of art, enhances the meaning of a painting.

Enigma is a proposed exhibition book exploring Walter Pater’s famous ekphrasis of Leonardo da Vinci’s, ‘Mona Lisa’. Pater’s words see beyond her sheer physical beauty, delving into her social significance to women as a symbol of feminism—the persona of the ‘Modern Woman’. Her mercurial and ever-shifting nature became the central idea that is visually expressed through the abstraction of three typefaces from different eras. The book presents the history of the Modern Woman, interspersing Pater’s ekphrasis between key moments of feminism to emphasise the Mona Lisa’s significance to the changing perceptions of women.