The Brief: Research an explorer or an expedition, select a target audience and create a piece of communication design that captures the content in a new and exciting way.
Amelia Earhart was an American aviation pioneer, who became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She disappeared during an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the world in 1937; her body and plane were never found. Many conspiracy theories formed around her disappearance.
The book would go through Amelia Earhart’s life with hints throughout, on the different conspiracy theories about what happened after her plane disappeared. The theories ranged from crash landing in the sea and becoming a castaway, to being spy for Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The beginning of the book tells her life story and then gradually becomes distorted as the narrative gets closer to her disappearance and the conspiracy theories begin to take over.
The book is Japanese bound and has a bright red cover to reflect the Japanese theories later in the narrative as well as Earhart’s strong and courageous spirit. The paper stock is off-white recycled paper with a heavy texture to reflect the manuals and books she would have had in her possession. The introductory pages tell the story of Earhart’s childhood and her discovery of aviation. The pages have splashes of yellow paint to reflect her first canary yellow plane.
As the book goes through her life and gets closer to her disappearance the text and images on each page start to become distorted as conspiracy theories sneak in. The folds in the edges of the paper are also used to display conspiracy theories. On the bottom right, an advert for the face cream Earhart used. The jar of this cream was then found on a beach close to where she disappeared.
Towards the end of the book the conspiracy theories take over narrative to confuse the reader. The pages become hard to understand as text and images become cut up and spattered with ink. The hints to the theories include, a notebook extract from a young girl who heard Earhart over her radio, a retracted letter from President Roosevelt and a possible photograph of Earhart after her disappearance.
The penultimate spread contains a perforated line going through a photograph of Amelia Earhart, encouraging the viewer to tear it open and reveal a collage of all the theories. The final page leaves the viewer with a question.
