For a graphic design course at MassArt, our assignment was to create a sequence book that illustrated a short poem or passage of our choosing. I chose an exerpt from John Steinbeck's mournful eulogy for a friend, "About Ed Ricketts" which is included as the opening to The Log from the Sea of Cortez.
My goal was to capture the sacredness and emotion of the text, and to honor its words and purpose though the whole object.
The shape of the book was open to us, and while one limitation was that there must be pages, there were no other requirements.
On the outside, the package appears like a simple black book, to pay homage to Steinbeck's long legacy as an American writer of stories such as Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. It is constructed out of folded and inset piecs of foam sheetboard.
Once opened, the reader sees not pages, but a deck of placards and another beat of black.
The pages are turned over one by one, allowing the reader time to reflect on the words, mirroring the heaviness that Steinbeck wrote them with.
For the pages, we were limited to using only black and white textures, the typeface we created ourselves and one additional typeface of our choosing. I chose Futura to balance the organic shapes of my typeface.
Typeface created with cardboard and acrylic paint.
Each page is constructed to best illustrate its phrase through typography and texture.
In sequence, the pages are ordered to draw the viewer into darkness and then back to light.
Above is the full set of twelve pages, including the final cover page.
The full excerpt:
He thought of music as something incomparable and concrete and dear.
Once, when I had suffered an overwhelming emotional upset, I went to the laboratory to stay with him.
I was dull and speechless with shock and pain.
He used music on me like a medicine.
Late in the night when he should have been asleep, he played music for me on his great phonograph
--even when I was asleep he played it, knowing that its soothing would get into my dark confusion.
He played the curing and reassuring plain songs, remote and cool and separate,
and then gradually he played the sure patterns of Bach,
until I was ready for more personal thought and feeling again, until I could bear to come back to myself.
And when that time came, he gave me Mozart.
I think it was as careful and loving medication as has ever been administered.
John Steinbeck, About Ed Ricketts
