The World Divination Association Lenormand Summit is fast approaching and we are working behind the scenes to ensure another brilliant online event to follow the WDA Virtual Conference from May. The visual identity for the summit was developed as the concept of the summit formed – a Lenormand evolution from traditional techniques to modern translations and styles of reading in 2020.
Artistic inspiration is a lot like reading in a way. It comes from a mix of knowledge and experience and a spark that you can’t exactly define where it came from, yet you just know it. It comes from a place that is undefinable yet within your subconscious, it can be triggered from a memory or an experience at any time. A trigger can transport you to another time in your life and draw something out of your past or your future. This is all part of the magickal experience of our lives.
It was in this way that a comment recently transported me at exactly the right moment to when I studied my Bachelor of Fine Arts, the concept that an abstraction can only be successful when the artist truly has knowledge of the original.
Initially, the obvious springboard for the Lenormand Summit visual identity was the Lenormand symbols. This began to evolve into their most simplified essence, drawing inspiration from the pure colour and form of the late paper cut-out works of Henri Matisse and a colour palette inspired by a single snapshot of a moment frozen in time.
From this artistic development, it started to become clear that these symbols would be the perfect commemorative deck for a cohesive summit experience, included in Tier 3 registration. As the deck and summit concept evolved side by side, I started to push these pure abstracted symbols further and further out of their card boundaries.
In much the same way, when we read Lenormand as an ever evolving system, if we start from a place of knowledge and experience, we can take the foundation and push it further and further beyond those boundaries.
The description below perfectly describes the Commemorative Summit Deck as an ‘aide-memoire’ in our ever evolving Lenormand journey as cartomancers and storytellers:
“The Lenormand Summit 2020 Commemorative Deck captures this moment in time, a moment of change, where tradition meets modern and ‘system’ meets ‘intuitive’. The deck is modern, there are no names, no numbers and no playing card inserts – purely the Lenormand symbols in their most basic forms. A ‘nod’ to the 19th century decks without the card inserts and a reminder in its playful tone, that Lenormand is about the storyline and narrative created by you, the reader, and a gentle aide-memoire that the cards we know and love, began life as a game – parlour entertainment.”
