Jonathan Reed's "The Lost Generation" is a poem about both cynicism and optimism. It went viral upon winning second place in AARP's 2007 U@50 video contest, wherein contestants were told to create a two-minute video describing their vision of the future. The poem has dual meanings - one when read normally and another when read in reverse.
This poem has such a unique structure to it (that it can be read both forward and backward) that I wanted to present it in a way that would do it justice but without distracting from the power of the words themselves.
I settled on simple and minimal typography and imagery in order to complement and enhance the poem's meaning. I knew I wanted an interactive element, so I combined this simple imagery with pop up windows and roll-over images.
The pop up windows were perfectly suited to this poem - one of the worst things about pop ups is having to go through and close all of them, but this poem adds a functional use to closing the pop ups as it allows the reader to read through the poem again in a completely different way.