Words are much like plants. They grow and adapt over time, with different species developing depending on location, time and other factors that can affect how something evolves.

The Strategy

This publication is in response to the Not Just Fleurons brief, and focuses on the etymology of one of the oldest words in the modern lexicon, birch, and the significance of our connection to it. When compared to other trees, the birch tree is renowned for its resilience and adaptability. Birch is often described as a pioneer species due its incredible capacity to distribute its seeds and colonise open land, enriching the quality of the soil around it so that the rest of the ecosystem can thrive. 

This ability to take root, spread across vast areas and serve as a pioneer for a greater community are sentiments share with the evolution of language and the words that we use to communicate. The parallels between the evolution of the birch and the etymology of language inspired me to create my own evolutionary tree for the word birch, to show how language and culture develops over time and supports community through communication.

The Format

Birch is a series of unbound, double-sided square cards and can be arranged as a piece of information design to showcase the connections between the major and minor branches of the etymological tree. The opening card provides the viewer with an introduction to the context of the publication, an outline of the cards that are included in the deck and the starting point for making the overarching etymological trees. These are presented as double page spreads within the submission with each single page in a spread being one side of the card.

The Typography

Three typefaces are used throughout the publication. Roboto for headings, Bennet Display for sub-headings and Turnip for body text. Roboto, a Grotesk sans serif makes a very bold and modern impression. Many of the words that make up the etymological tree possess uncommon characters to mark accents or inflections and Roboto is one of the few typefaces that can accommodate this amount of variety. To contrast the clean style of Roboto, Bennet Display and Turnip are used for the body of the publication. The triangular serifs within Bennet Display emulate the budding branches of a newly formed birch, and Turnip with its top-heavy form and unevenly vertical stems reflect natural and ununiform growth.

The Colours

Each chapter has its own colour palette to clearly identify cards as being from that section of the etymological tree. The colour palettes of each of the sections are inspired by the region where the branch is located, with the starting section being the natural black, white and brown tones of the birch trees. This use of colour shows which section each card is from and also marks a clear aesthetic difference between the different cultures as they each have histories that are specific to them. There is a range of different colours but within each section they follow a system of primary, secondary, tertiary and neutral to allow for differences in personality while maintaining a consistent hierarchy.

The Audience

Birch is intended for people, who like me, have an interest in etymology or the history behind the formation, development and evolution of languages. It is accessible to a wider audience outside of that core, with the hope being that it may foster new fascinations for this field.