it was important to me in this piece that the placement of the text be somewhat taken for granted. this is why i put it directly in the center of the frame, a place wherein the imagery is expected to be found, where it doesn't surprise you, or rattle you, or make you inform your reading differently like you might have if it had a significant location. it's kind of similar to the idea of working in a vacuum... it isn't that the type doesn't have a location in the composition, just that its location is so imminently forgettable you don't have to think about it.
as for the text itself, i knew i needed a thin, sans-serif. futura turned out the font i wanted, its circles allowing for plenty of airflow. i experimented with very many variations on the sizing, sometimes making it much more pronounced, but mostly striving to get it just pronounced enough not to look as though it were receding into space or anything. i sketched out this composition to mimic the feeling of exhalation and inhalation, soft and rhythmic and smooth. when i laid out my letters, i first tried to put them all along a baseline together, but the straight line looked too out of place. i then tried to align them through the middle, which didn't seem to look right, either. it became too much of a symmetrical shape, and not secure or level enough. eventually i averaged those two shapes and took the arrangement between them.
i really wanted this piece to feel gentle, to approach the viewer like you approach something flighty without startling it. the biggest critique i got dealt with the framing, whether i could have let it bleed off the frame, or brought it in closer. i'm afraid it might have worked better in that regard if i'd given more space around the border because there is some amount of tension in how closely the b and the e hug those lines.
all in all, though, it was pretty well received and i like how it came out.
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