Power and personality

The visual identity is a post-modern delight of Victorian letterpress print blocks, comic book echoes, zine textures and digital technology. Capturing Ruth’s power, personality and punchy writing style in the identity was key. In her own words, she ‘writes with pace, warmth and energy; and vividly. I do wit of all kinds, from laugh-out-loud to finely woven satire. I have a good ear and enjoy capturing the nuances of a natural voice’. We took her words directly to the letterpress – into ink and paper, producing a set of bold, confident typographic statements. We combined these words with a mix of print and digital textures to create a layered riso-board in five super-bright ink colours. The final output for print was a set of intentionally lo-fi but beautifully Risograph printed assets delivered by workers’ cooperative and print experts, Calverts – a long-standing collaborator of Thomas.Matthews.

The iterative logo contains a set of speech bubbles to communicate The Penwoman’s variety of voice and style. Exquisitely lo-fi print items are supported by the essential website and digital marketing tools to enable The Penwoman to greet the world with a real Ka-Pow.