A Memorial to Byrd Baylor (1924-2021)
I created the spiral mandala using a high-resolution scanner, photoshop, and three years of picking things up in the desert. For this commemorative poster, I worked with the Pima County Environmental Quality department to use the image and Byrd’s writing as a focus for desert environmental education.
They wanted to showcase snippets of text from the many children’s books Byrd Baylor had written. That was my design challenge: to avoid visual chaos. The final solution was to combine the words and graphics so that there are really two posters. From a distance the mandala was dominant. On closer inspection, attention to typography allowed people to still easily read the words.
Sample quote from Byrd Baylor poster
THE OLD MAN SAID, “Most people never hear those things at all.”
I said, “I wonder why.”
He said, “They just don’t take the time you need for something that important.”
I said, “I’ll take the time. But first you’ll have to teach me.”
“I’d like to if I could,” he said, “but the thing is…you have to learn it from the hills and ants and lizards and weeds and things like that. They do the teaching around here…Start with one seed pod, or one dry weed or one horned toad, or one handfull of dirt or one sandy wash.”
He told me it was worth the time. He said trees are very honest and they don’t care much for fancy people…you have to respect that tree or hill or whatever it is you’re with…Take a horned toad, for example. If you think you’re better than a horned toad, you’ll never hear its voice – even if you sit there in the sun forever.
And he said, “Don’t be ashamed to learn from bugs or sand or anything.”
—from: The Other Way to Listen, by Byrd Baylor, 1978