La porta dell'inferno

Art direction
Naming
Identity
UI design

After 700 years, the Divine Comedy lives again thanks to immersive technologies.

'La porta dell’inferno’ is a virtual reality game that allows high school students to impersonate Dante. Realised in collaboration with Collegio San Carlo, the experience encompasses the first 3 cantos of the Inferno along the way through the dark wood to the hell's gate.

As art director of the project, I designed the identity, commissioned a cover art as well as a promo video and created a landing page to present the experience.
‍
‍

Game Identity

images from the game

website

Promo video

To give letters a carved in stone look, I decided to work with linoleum block print. When using linocut, the job needs to be done backwards. This helped to achieve a raw look, as working on a flipped sketch made it easier to look at it like an image, rather than words.
‍
For the letterforms, I used a Romanesque inscription made in 1270 on the Pantheon in Rome. As Dante was alive at the time, I like to think that he posed his eyes on it at least once.
‍

process

Romanesque inscription, Pantheon, ROME (1270 AD)
courtesy of paul shaw

This project was featured on an article I wrote for the August 2021 issue of ‘The Edge’, the quarterly magazine of the Calligraphy & Lettering Arts Society.