Note: The back cover is on the left. The Front Cover is on the right. This is due to printing purposes arrangement.
These pages are the two most controlled and structured in the book. This spread was chosen and designed specifically to acclimate the reader to the changes in text and prepare them for the rest of the book so they don't become frustrated with the design.
This page was designed to include a large amount of text and to exercise the idea of highlighting words and phrases to really illustrate the idea of changes in mood, volume and importance. Also there is interaction between the text and the body of the Joker to show off skill in text control (as a designer) and to visualize the connection between the text and the idea that the Joker is encompassed by these thoughts.
This page focuses on breaking down some of the rules of paragraph structure and allows a little more space between thoughts. The inclusion of the second character serves to connect the imagery to the text content that the Joker can manipulate others to think as he does. The faded image in the background aids in the added feeling of uneasiness as there are multiple levels to the design just as there are multiple levels of consideration to each quote.
This page was the climax of the book; therefore, from a design level had to best illustrate the madness of the Joker. I used a structure in the paragraphs of text only to balance the lack of restraint used with the imagery. The text on either side mimics the color of the image (green and purple are dominant colors on the left and the red orange on the right), in an attempt to make the text more than just words on a screen. In doing so, I feel as though the text was made into more of a light source and interacts much more with the image, again connecting the content of the Joker’s thoughts to the imagery of the Joker, himself. The falling cards are a nod to most any animated “commercial” that promotes the Joker. They allowed me to display my comprehension of the software and tools I used by altering flat imagery into a three dimensional illusion.
This project was submitted for a college project while I attended SSU, and I’m proud to say that it received a perfect score of 100/100! The assignment was to create a custom made “design booklet” with more than six individual pages (therefore, spreads counted as two pages each). The content could be anything of our choosing but must be of the same topic and must be cohesive when grouped together to form the book. With my options open, I chose my favorite villain of all time, the Joker.
When designing this book, I knew the main goal would have to be to convey the craziness the Joker went through on a daily basis. Therefore, I knew that I would need to perform an in-depth type study to find all of the fonts I would use in this book. While compiling the text, I would constantly play the movie The Dark Knight and listen to the emotions behind the words. I would match my typeface to that emotion one phrase at a time. I also used color and size differences to convey the idea that these phrases were not meant to be read at the same speed or with the same importance as the rest of the content. Rather, the reader was coaxed into embracing the word or phrase individually so that it was given a more than average amount of attention. The reader was made to feel the text in different personalities and in different voices, just as the many voices within the Joker’s schizophrenic mind. There are also uses of faded, almost invisible images layered behind the main content to show a sense of multiple thoughts at the same time along with multiple focal points.
References:
The text came from: Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Alan Moore’s Batman: The Killing Joke. The imagery was taken from The Killing Joke, also the Batman Joker Arkham Asylum Gates Poster image was used for the back cover. The variety of fonts came from free sources on the web, mostly from dafont.com.
