Project Type: Book Design

  • A to Z from Armageddon

    A to Z from Armageddon

    This book is an exploration of creative processes in trying to make sense of random rules.

    The letters of the alphabet were taken as the basis for brainstorming apparently random associations between different shapes, materials, colours, meaning and narratives beginning with that letter. This provided a way of opening up possibilities beyond established rules of harmony and exploring different and new ways of combining media, colours and shapes.

    The book is a playful exploration of different associations of letterforms (style and typographic variants) and the words they may begin (colour, media, objects and moods) as a design challenge to see how apparently random elements can be combined to create harmonies and/or tensions.

    I am interested in looking at:

    • associations attached to specific letters, partly but not only through the words they begin, but also their history and evolution from earlier alphabets and their general appearance eg certain letters are generally curved, some have diagonal lines etc
    • how the abstract anatomy of a letterform can convey mood and meaning and how this can be radically altered – shape and positioning of serifs and swashes, stroke contrast, angles and position of lines, forms of curves etc. This includes not only looking at existing typefaces, but also drawing my own letterforms to enhance the meaning of words beginning with the letter.
    • can letterforms morph into each other – distinguishes specific letters from each other, what do intermediate forms look like – is this an interesting area of exploration?
    • effects of materials, papers and use of different drawing tools beginning with the letter eg Q for quill, G for glue/graphite etc can be creatively used and combined to enhance the mood of letters with specific meanings.
    • how colours beginning with those letters can be used to enhance the mood eg B with blue, brown and/or black.
    • how all the above can be combined with positioning and layout to create a playful narrative.

    Letter A  

    Aluminium foil

    Letter B ideas

    Blobs

    Letter D 

    Drypoint

    Letter F 

    Letter G 

    Letter H ideas

    Letter I 

    Isometric Paper

    Letter J 

    Jelly Jam Jar

    Letter K

    Letter L

    Letter M 

    Metallic paper, Matches, Masking Tape

    Letter N 

    Letter O

    OHP Transparency, oil pastel

    Letter P

    Letter Q

    Letter R

    Letter S

    Letter T

    Tissue Paper

    Letter U 

    Mockup for U

    Letter V  

    Letter W 

    Woodcut

    Letter X 

    Letter Y 

    Letter Z 

    Zentangle

    Creative Reflections

    My aim for the book at that point was to:  explore expressive letterforms and the ways letter shapes can be playfully manipulated and combined with colour and layout dynamics to form narratives. I had thought of this possibly as a children’s book for age around 8-10 when children can read well enough not to be confused by alternative letterforms, and beginning to be much more interested in new vocabulary and ‘bending rules’.

    However my ideas for the book expanded to further exploration of materials, colour and creative image creation as I progressed through Assignment 4. I became very interested in paper, and the ways that different scanning strategies can bring out different aspects of apparently very uninteresting materials like tissue paper (See post on Tissue Paper). I had also begun to look at woodcut, deepened my skills in Photoshop and Illustrator. This built on earlier work on colour and printmaking in earlier OCA courses.

    Other research and links

    History of the Alphabet

    Runic alphabets

    Islamic calligraphy

    Concrete poetry

    Typographic Art

    There have been many aspects of the course that I want to explore further in future:

    • visual dynamics of design
    • calligraphy and expressive type and visual dynamics of letterforms – following on from my work in Assignments 3 and 4
    • using different papers and materials for printing and then seeing how to enhance the effects through further digital manipulation in Photoshop – drawing also on work for OCA Printmaking 1 and Illustration 2.
    • commercial self-publishing options and process, including further work on layout and narrative.

    As a way of linking these elements, I decided on a book playing with the visual dynamics of letterforms  exploring different associations of the letterforms themselves (style and typographic variants) and the words they may begin (colour, media, objects and moods) as a design challenge to see how apparently random elements can be combined to create harmonies and/or tensions.

    I then started to plan production of the book in the context of both the self-publishing workflow and the inherent unpredictability of the (my) creative process – and the potential conflicts between linear planning and the need for openness to new ideas and directions as work proceeds.

    Project 5.2 : Planning your workflow

    In the end the product became two books – both still works in progress:

    • a draft book for children using my initial simple ideas and sketches, as a colourful book focusing just on letterforms. These still need further refinement and simplification, then testing with children.
    • a draft book for adults and teenagers where images and ideas are more (too?) complex but where I had much more scope to explore different media, relationship between words and images. As it stands I very much enjoyed experimenting and developing all the images and researching the histories of the different letters. But it does not yet hang together as a book – I need to think more about how the images relate together as a sequence with either greater diversity or greater similarity in styles.

    Part of the issue was lack of time – although in the real world there are tight deadlines, and I could have been much tighter in focus at the planning stage, my purpose in this assignment was learning and exploration. Potentially there is a series of different books here, each with a different focus – for example more formal patterns, fantasy and narrative, flat design, alphabet history and so on. I now need a follow-on process of reassess and refinement – and testing with different audiences.

    So the book has become much more of an exploration of the (my) creative process – interlinkages between visual expression, materials and language, the relationship between creativity and constraints in leading to new directions and inspiration. Though this exploration will be more demonstrated through its outcome in the images than discussed in the book itself. It is now much more aimed at teenagers and adults.

    Many ideas and possibilities emerged in the process before then being simplified and refined around one dominant idea.
    For more details of the process and to contribute your own ideas see: https://www.design.zemniimages.info.

  • On the Road: Cover Design

    On the Road: Cover Design

    The Brief

    Create jacket artwork for the Beat generation classic, On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The publishers, Viking Press, have decided to re-release this title in hardback form, and want a new jacket design to reflect the beatnik and avant-garde nature of this classic novel.

    My response to the book itself was very mixed. I did a detailed concept map (see first page of the Sketchbook) to try and capture and work through my very mixed responses.  I really like the energy – and being ‘On the Road’ is something in my own soul. A passage that is often quoted is:

    The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

    But I found the implicit and often explicit sexism not only of Dean, but also Kerouac himself, really got under my skin – so close to the sexism and prejudice that was all around me growing up.

    Cover 1 Black City

    Black City was my first new idea, developed from my original dark text image and road cover ideas, trying to achieve a similar feel of darkness and fractured movement – maybe ‘big brother watching’. The treatment is expressive, trying to attract the reader with a bold contrasty image and distinctive style.

    The text on which it is based is : The whole mad swirl of everything that was to come began then; it would mix up all my friends and all I had left of my family in a big dust cloud over the America night”

    Cover 2 Pulp Fiction

    This cover was a second parallel idea – developed from one of the few passages in the book that could speak to a modern more feminist audience. It is more of a narrative treatment that suggests a story through juxtaposition starting with the text:

    “Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk.
    Not courting talk – real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”

    Cover 3 Wings

    This came from a completely new sketch in oil pastel and graphite of some text  near the end of the book where Dean’s energy has nearly sent him mad.

    “I saw his huge face over the plains with the mad, bony purpose and the gleaming eyes; I saw his wings. I saw his old jalopy chariot with thousands of sparking flames shooting out the front. I saw the path it burned over the road…Dean had gone mad again”

    This is another bold, contrasty expressive approach, aiming to attract the reader by a distinctive image style. I was playing around with bold shapes and lines across the page on this one, enjoying the oil pastel. I liked the coloured and textured effect I got – particularly when it was enhanced with a generous dose of fixative. Also the scratched out name.

  • Anonymous: Experimental Book

    Anonymous: Experimental Book

    This project revisited the theme of ‘Identity’.

    I had had in mind a narrative of an ‘anonymous’ individual seeking hard to find their identity in a crowded and competitive world where advertisements are always trying to make people feel inadequate in order to buy products. Those who are not able to cope with these pressures are given very little help, and often descend into serious mental health problems. My images are informed by novels about experiences in mental health institutions like Janet Came’s ‘Faces in the Water’, also the experiences of people I know, and my own experiences of depression.

    Concertina Book MockUp

    Printed as a Concertina on Everyday Photo Paper

    Image Spreads

    I started with experimental images using Adobe Illustrator styles on the letter ‘I’.

    Some experimental accidents

    Reflections on my Creative Design Process

    To be developed

    The brief was to be very open and exploratory, going with the flow and ‘happy accidents’ in order to maximise creativity and discovery. Rather than following a strict linear sequence. My linking thread was an exploration of the theme of ‘identity’ – and the brief by the end to produce of about 12 or more printed images that could form some sort of narrative sequence and be bound together as an experimental book of  about 16 pages.

    The project aimed to extend my exploration into materials, the design process, and alternative, inventive approaches to book production. It involved four interlinked exercises:

    Project 4.1: Papers:  broadened significantly my concept of book design and the many possibilities for one single image, thinking about emotional associations as well as technical considerations of paper qualities. And exploring more papers I had not looked at in other OCA courses.

    Project 4.2 : Creating Images : here I found it was very interesting to really narrow down my options to Illustrator, and black and white exploration of styles. Although this meant that in many ways technique preceded meaning, I discovered new themes and potential meanings in the quite random process of image experimentation.

     Project 4.3: Printing  I focused on Inkjet printing  because this was I type of printing I had so far mostly taken for granted and had not really explored all the possibilities of using different types of paper, mediums, overprinting and so on. Other types of printmaking I had done in my OCA printmaking course, and also incorporate in the Assignment piece. I produced a sketchbook of images on the papers I had collected. This led to many ‘Happy Accidents’ and discoveries, for example with OHP Transparencies as well as overprinting text.

    Project 4.4: Collating and binding  I looked at different combinations and narratives using InDesign but going back and forth between printing, selection, collation.

    BUT my design process was not at all linear. It was more useful to see the projects as parallel aspects between which I moved as questions from one level raised questions or possibilities in another.

    • My selection and trial of papers was (and is) ongoing as I think more about what effects I am trying to have, and also discover more about different ways of printing – for example the Happy Accidents with OHP transparencies led to me trying similar types of smearing on other glossy types of paper. Different papers were added to my experimentation as I went along.
    • Development of the images was interlinked with considerations of narrative and the ways they were to be bound (linear or cyclical, as booklet or concertina where all the spreads would be seen at once?) and also papers and printing (what effects would different papers have, inclusion of happy accidents to accentuate/contrast the meaning, what is possible or not possible to print)
    • Printing and the various unexpected outcomes led me back to re-evaluate and explore other possibilities in the images, and try different types of paper
    • Binding and collating involved questions of narrative and the relationship between images, which again led me back to the images themselves in terms of both colour and stylistic consistency as a sequence, whether or not different types of paper should be used for different images and types of overprinting.

    Throughout the process to avoid just getting lost in ‘accidents’ I needed to keep asking myself – what am I trying to say with all this?

    • delve deeper and deeper into madness and depression as a futile search for a phantom identity (does it exist???if so can I find it??? or is the brain incapable of doing that?)
    • come to the conclusion that is it better to just go with the flow of life and enjoy it?
    • show a brave anonymous individual being made to feel they have to ‘be cool’ and explore their individuality?
    • is their self-exploration just amusing?
    • or does it lead to disintegration and loss of sense of self?
    • do they then reach any happy ending? or just a compromise?

    But my understanding and narrative through some of these issues also evolved from the technical and design discoveries, not from pre-planning, and I think this external and somewhat random input helped the narrative from becoming too navel-gazing and enabled a bit of humour.