House of Cards // Ozymandias

Ozymandias is a series of conceptual cards interpreting Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias, designed to visually capture themes of impermanence, ruin, and the passage of time. The project aimed to translate a literary text into graphic design form. The challenge was to move beyond literal illustration and instead design with abstraction that communicated the poem’s deeper meaning. Typography is fragmented, eroded, and reassembled across the cards, evoking decay and collapse. Neutral palettes with distressed textures suggest sand, stone, and weathered ruins. Compositional imbalance creates a sense of disintegration over time. Rather than illustrating a crumbling statue, the design performs the act of erosion through type and layout. This abstract approach turns design into metaphor, making the piece feel timeless while rooted in the poem’s message.