The drawings

Inspired by the frequency and choice of words in President Obama’s eloquent inaugural address, David Esslemont created a series of pen-drawn compositions or calligrams.

The drawing used for the cover is based on the whole speech, while each illustration is based on the text on the facing page. For example: if we analyze the word frequency of the whole speech ignoring common verbs, pronouns, prepositions and indefinite articles etc, we find the following words occur most often: nation (11), new (11), America (10). These are represented in the calligram by large red words. Words occurring four or eight times, e.g. people, spirit, today and God, are drawn in smaller blue letters, and black ink is used for all 171 words that occurred two or three times, e.g. peace, power, hope and prosperous. Words occurring only once were not used.

For the illustrations, all the words used in the text on the facing pages are represented: red is used for a frequency ≥ 4, blue for ≥ 2 and black for words appearing once.