If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

If. Rudyard Kipling

Individually we read this poem, we made notes from this after reading of what we could analyse from the poem. We then joined into large groups and made more notes on this.

From reading this I thought that Rudyard Kipling may have been giving general life advice to maybe to a son or a younger peer. The poem is very headstrong and positive. There is always a solution e,g a solution to being poor or rich.

We paired up and had to come up with a typographic solution to this poem. We could pick a word or a line or the whole speech to portray typographicly.

We read this over and over and we began to delve deep into the meanings of the words Kipling uses. The most noticeable thing we noticed was that Kipling uses Man, son and men.
The poem is aimed at a man, the date of this poem was 1895 a time when the world was still very man orientated. Women did not have the rights as men did.

When this poem was written women did not have the power to speak up about what this poem insinuates however today if someone were to publish this in the 20th Century women all around the world would have the power to speak out and say what they really think.

We visualised this poem by redesigning it in a modern way. We viewed this as today there are many single parents.

We imagined a single woman breast feeding her child holding the baby in her arms with the poem written from her kneck downwards feeding these words of wisdom into her baby.
We thought this would really contradict the poem as today it is a total norm for a woman to bring up a child with these values.