Challenge to design a compelling typeset style for a personal narrative based on one of four possible topics — Guilt, Loss, Luck and Risk.
My first project of my second semester, 'Tales of Tricky Travels,' is a personal narrative account of my journey to New Zealand, and the personal struggle that it involved. The aim of the brief was to design and implement a compelling and aesthetically appealing typeset format to convey our personal narrative. It combined book-binding skills learnt in various workshops, with our knowledge and skills in using the Adobe Suite.
The finished outcome, showing the front cover design complete with the 'luggage strap' style title strip.
The concept was to illustrate the 'travel' nature of my narrative through a simple visual design for the cover. The passport has common links with travel that everyone can recognise, along with the luggage tag. I used these to create a cover design that is simple and aesthetically appealing, whilst informing readers of the content clearly.
The back cover of the book itself is blank, similar to an official passport. All the important information for the book is found on the luggage tag.
The luggage tag could simply be removed by sliding the book out, or by tearing the perforated edge (shown here), accessing the book's contents.
Luggage tag once removed from the book revealing the cover.
Once the luggage tag has been removed, the reader can then view the passport-style cover of the book, and the narrative content within.
Copyright notice and 'dedication' statement. I used a short and strong statement to set the tone for the narrative that would follow.
Contents page and Preface. The contents was designed to resemble an 'Arrivals and Departures' board, to highlight the narratives connections with travel.
Simple, double-page spread featuring a selection of punctuation marks, which, in the context of the narrative, represent expletives.
The page designs were solely typographical, and any imagery was produced by either typesetting the narrative in a certain way,
or through the use of blocks of colour.
One of the more illustrative page designs in the book. Still focusing on the typesetting of the narrative, and the use of
blocks of colour to make the visual imagery.
With every page design, the typesetting of the narrative can be directly related to what the narrative is talking about. In the above example,
the narrative is referring to when I collapsed in LAX, so the narrative has been typeset to give the appearance that it too is collapsing.
There were some text-heavy pages, which I wanted to make more aesthetically appealing than a block of typeset text. I felt that making the left-page into more of a typographic piece would not only aid the flow of the narrative, but also keep readers interested, rather than have them becoming bored by reading large bodies of text.
Because there were some very text-heavy pages, I decided to design some spreads which were less so. I felt that this would create a pleasant contrast between some spreads and others, and also change the pace of the narrative.
Copyright 2015 - James Alexander Wilson.
