Mary Oliver wrote that "poetry is a life-cherishing force." A Year with Mary is a visual exploration of that force—an immersive, year-long design project engaging the full breadth of Oliver’s work across her lifetime. Living exclusively within her published collections, we selected one poem each day for 365 days, designing and publishing a corresponding Instagram post that paired a key excerpt with the complete poem.
Grounded in a core brand system of color, type, and layout, each individual composition was created in direct response to the day’s reading, allowing the visual language to evolve alongside Oliver’s themes: reverence for the natural world, beauty, love, and the intimate experience of being human. The result is a living archive of 365 distinct yet cohesive works that together form a visual interpretation of her poetic legacy.
In a cultural landscape where only fragments of her most well-known lines tend to circulate, this project sought to reintroduce the fullness of Oliver’s work. By pairing excerpt with entirety and clearly citing each source collection, A Year with Mary invites viewers into a deeper, more sustained encounter with her poetry, using design as both entry point and guide.
- Concept, Writing
- Liz Olson
- Design
- Stacey Donaldson Schellenberg
Project link
