Shakespeare in Black & White: Sonnet Posters by Xtian Miller

Last year, we featured Xtian Miller’s experimental typographic posters, and this time we’re diving back into his catalog with Sonnet Posters, a project created between January 2018 and May 2020.

The series draws inspiration from William Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, originally published in 1609. Xtian selected excerpts from the poems and translated 25 of them into stark abstract compositions exploring recurring ideas of time, light and darkness.

Each piece follows a consistent editorial structure, pairing the visuals with the sonnet number in large type, alongside a short excerpt and credit line. Rendered entirely in black and white, the posters reduce each interpretation to simple geometric forms, grainy gradients and dramatic shifts in contrast. Some compositions evoke eclipses or distant landscapes, while others become almost completely abstract, leaving only subtle visual cues to the words that inspired them.

Explore more of Xtian Miller’s work on his website and Instagram.

More graphic design via Behance