Traditional book design,
Part of a college assignment. We had to pick a book of choice and design it in a traditional and experimental way. I picked "1001 Arabian nights", a collection of traditional arabian and oriental stories. This is my interpretation for the traditional design of the book.
The main plot revolves around the famous story of the persian king Shahryar who, finding out that his wife had been cheating on him, decides to marry another virgin every night and kill her in the morning. But when he marries his Grand Vizier's daughter, Scheherazade, she manages to occupy him with her stories which she keeps telling from night to night, always cuting them at the most interesting part so that Shahryar keeps her alive to finish the story the next night.
The main inspiration for the design was the "framing system" of the stories: the main character, Scheherazade, narrates a set of tales, but the characters in her tales also tell tales of their own (and so on), creating a complex system of "stories within stories".
In my design I tried to bring out the framing system of the stories, both in the content section and throughout the book.
A custom made lettering for the main cover and title page, inspired by Arabian calligraphy.
Each set of frame-stories (consisting of the main story and all of the
sub-levels) is given another Arabesque-inspired pictogram, which makes the navigation easier and more visual.
Also, every pictogram has as many "layers" as there are levels to the story.
The layers become "active" as the story progresses, creating another layer of navigation.
Since Scheherazade's tales are told as an almost undisrupted flow, I decided to move away from the traditional chapter beginnings on the right page. New chapters starts immediately, avoiding unnecessary pause between the stories.
The number of the current night in which the story is told is indicated in the margins, right next to the part of the text where a new night begins.
Thank you for your time!
