Karel Martens Booklet
Comms. Studio — Spring Sem
Spreads! Here we go… the project leg I’ve been dreading most. My timbers are shivering! EEK!
Flat-Plan 01
- Object drawer is a favorite here
- Definitely carry the museum-card structure through to whatever final spreads I end up with
- I’m liking the artist/designer comparison… potential story arc?
Flat-Plan 02
- Amber likes the whole pattern-zoom-in thing on Page 12, could be interesting to mark each page with a new pattern?
- The floret progression is cool! mentally bookmark this.
Flat-Plan 03
- Some of the ideas which I’m most excited about.
- Brett is into the table of contents, I’m into the found object stack and the cover… still need to get my narrative together.
In drafting up these flat plans, I was mostly looking to get my ideas out on the page. Regrettably, I wasn’t considering story as much as I should’ve been. I’m excited about some of the visuals I’ve got in my brain, but I seriously need to refine the tale I’m trying to tell. I’m probably going to lean towards Flat Plan 3, though I’ll definitely be pulling ideas from my other two.
Quick Revision Jot
Patterns & Motifs as Personality Traits or Elements of Practice
Headings for each section won’t be labels like “early life,” “work,” etc. They’ll be traits or labels.
- Descriptions of art school, early life, less work based: The Artist.
- Descriptions of found objects, mono-prints as work: The Collector.
- OASE, Type-Based Work: The Designer. (or the typographer?)
- Werkplaats Typography and professor stuff: The Teacher.
- Patterns and systemic work: The Grammatician / The Structurist.
Revised Flat-plan
Quick Idea Jot II
IDEA: FOR PAGE NUMBERS: FLIPBOOK STYLE CONSTRUCTION OF A FLORET
COLOR SCHEME: ORANGE-RED AND DESATURATED BLUE
MOTIFS TO FOLLOW: CUTOUTS, LINE PRINTING, BIG TITLES FOR LABELS, COLOR BLOCKING
BAR PRINTING ON SIDES OF PAGES
COLORS ON TABLE OF CONTENTS THAT CORRESPOND TO EACH SPREAD
***REMINDER! TYPE ASSET SHEET FOR TUESDAY!
I’ve got a lot of work to do! Definitely can’t say I’m pleased with these. Brett has let me know that everything just feels huge at the moment, and I agree. Story and motif-wise, these are all still concepts I want to pursue, but they will need a lot of refinement. We’ll see where I end up after break!
Monday Night Drafts & Process
Cover
Iffy on this one. This is probably the lowest I’ve ever fidelity’d for a draft, but much like my KM poster, cobbling a composition together will tell me more about the idea than figuring out a treatment for the type. I’d likely set this in line printing or with florets.
The layout works just the way I wanted it to — the two ideas of playing with front / back and creating a little visual puzzle for the viewer intrigues me, and this scratches both itches. The front is also a sly nod to Martens’ proclivity for patterns and uniform prints of the same object, while the back cover references the range of work that emerges upon a second glance.
How I set this will make or break the cover. Let’s hope I’ve gotten faster at line-print-replication since the poster.
Table of Contents
Another composition that I feel could benefit from some nice texturizing and rubbed-ink effects. I’m thinking of giving the numbers in the background the same smudged look as the text on my poster: a fresh off the printing press and still wet sort of thing.
I like my idea here. I was originally going to scatter my page numbers in dots with corresponding section titles on the left, but these pops of color felt too sparse. The array of numbers also felt overwhelming… it’s hard to find a sweet spot between huge n’ horsey and headache-inducingly small. Draft below.
I think the lines in my final comp fix the sparseness issue, provide a spot to set text, and help the numbers feel less overwhelming. Still, something feels missing… I feel like a 50’s noir detective standing in a rainy alleyway and trying to deduce who killed Mary Sue. The pieces are all there… but the truth eludes me!
POST CRIT: No. No. No. It’s clunky, horsey, and takes up far too much real estate. Frankly an embarrassment.
The Artist
This is probably one of my favorite drafts of the bunch. An enormous piece of feedback from my first 3 drafts was that everything was, well, ENORMOUS. White space and I are not on good terms. I work heavy, huge, and horsey… much more poster than publication. I’m slowly rehabilitating myself… in my drafting process, I had to continuously check in with sizing and slap myself on the wrist if I had text over 300 points. I think this spread is a marked improvement.
After lots of moving shit around and trying to find a spot for my stupid blue color block, I landed on something that feels far more decorous… room to breathe, contrast in portrait sizes, and large text that doesn’t obscure two whole columns. Columns are hot commodities, and I must use them wisely.
Next steps may include organizing my image captions (just noticed the one on the left is set a good centimeter above the one on the right. Ew). and messing with the photo colors. I don’t want everything to be black and white… I may want to try some duotones.
POST CRIT: Still not unhappy with this spread, but it’s just all-around lacking in anything interesting or vibrant. Brett says it could really benefit from some color, plus more images of Karel’s work. Scrap this? Probably.
The Designer
ATTENTION: Pardon the interruption in writing style. I’m updating this a bit late, and writing from the perspective of myself pre-crit feels disingenuous. I will be running through the remainder of these drafts with bullet points on myprocess & the crit I received (and minimal blethering/blathering).
PRE-CRIT:
- Created the Designer spread using a visible grid that mimics Martens’ found museum cards
- Good opportunity for interesting paper textures and pencil-notation motifs, both of which I’m carrying over from my poster
- I liked my grid-interrupting organization of each OASE cover, but I’m not happy with them being uniform in size
POST CRIT:
- Not the worst sin of my draft booklet, but can definitely be improved upon
- Too uniform, too expected
- Bring in work that isn’t just OASE covers?
- Leave this one alone for now. Time will come to fix it up, but there are much more pressing concerns with other spreads.
Timeline
PRE-CRIT:
- Yeah, feeling good about this. Been looking forward to using line printing for informational purposes, and this is a good opportunity for all that.
- Could benefit from color. This is definitely a spread I’m picturing with a papery printed vibe, so I’ll also need to add texture and notations. All that will come once I’ve got my layout down, though.
- Not all the dates match up with the lines. Fix!
Below: Another structure I’d been tinkering with. Don’t like this one as much as it doesn’t give the line printing a good opportunity to shine… the motif is at its best when there are clear changes in value to be represented.
POST-CRIT:
- Another one to leave alone until later. Most definitely will need color, but the lines are working alright.
The Collector
PRE-CRIT:
- This is a spread I was feeling pretty good about. I like the show-and-tell aspect of the numbered objects coupled with prints. Fun way to get the viewer more deeply engaged.
- Struggled a lot with placing the stack of objects. It was hard to strike a balance between not-too-large and not-too-small while sticking within my 3-column grid.
- Don’t like the size similarity between the objects and the prints. Also need to find a way to create a “container” for the objects without using a giant orange color block (feels amature).
Below: Alternate layout idea where I use a Martens portrait as an object “container.” Interesting in theory, but this would’ve been like the 7th KM portrait in this booklet. Surprisingly, there is such a thing as too much Martens
POST-CRIT:
- Probably my most redeemable spread in Brett’s eyes. I’ve got something here, but it needs a lot of refining.
The Teacher
PRE-CRIT:
- Really liking this grid arrangement. I don’t know about the black, white & blue color scheme, but I’m a fan of the sections I’ve split the spread into.
- I also like that Karel nestles so nicely in the center of the page. He’s in a pose where his head wouldn’t get split in half by the booklet seam.
Below: Another idea I had for a layout. What the hell was I thinking
POST-CRIT:
- MORE. PHOTOS. OF. WORK! This got hammered into my head today, and rightfully so. Why am I devoting so much space to folks that aren’t Karel Martens?
- Ditch the baby blue. It’s doing nothing at all for making the page pop.
The Luminary
PRE-CRIT:
- Sort of a wait-and-see. I have a good idea in my head of what I’d like this to look like, and I don’t think executing it would be too terribly hard. The star of the spread would be more hand-set line print type, which I now have plenty of experience with.
POST-CRIT:
- Still a wait-and-see. Based on the feedback I received from other spreads, I still think I can tailor this one to fit Brett’s overall advice: more color, more work.
Crit Wrap-Up
This was a rough one for me. Probably the lowest I’ve felt in studio this semester. I came in feeling pretty good about what I’d cooked up, and left feeling like I’d had the rug pulled out from under me… but that was a necessary bump in the road. I needed to wake up to the fact that I can do a whole lot better. All of Brett’s feedback is undeniable: these spreads look like they’ve had the life sucked out of ’em, they’re colorless, there isn’t enough separation between page 1 & 2 of each spread, and the booklet doesn’t show nearly enough of Martens’ actual practice. Why am I giving up valuable space for a low-quality portrait of Wigger Bierma when there is 70+ years of KM work just waiting to be shown to the world?
I think what worried me most about the feedback I got was what it says about my taste. It makes me scared that I am, in fact, unable to distinguish good & bad, and that I’m just bumbling through design and getting lucky when I land on something good. Outside of crit, I think I’m usually able to smack my work into shape through an intense self-inflicted fear of failure, so the fact that I’ve lead myself so astray is concerning. I know, this is a stupid line of thinking.
“I get knocked down, but I get up again” — Chumbawamba
Nevertheless, We Persist: Feverishly Redoing Everything
The Collector
The Collector was the first spread I honed in on for editing. First thing’s first: 6 images of Martens’ work wasn’t sufficient. I added in a photo of his studio wall as it is a fitting representation of his scavenger lifestyle. No wonder I was having trouble staying away from an enormous found object stack… I simply didn’t have enough elements on the page to balance sizing! The go-ahead to cram in more work was just what I needed. During my subsequent edits, I repeated this bit of advice to myself like a meditative mantra, and it helped every time.
I broke out of the self-imposed constraint of stacking my objects in a “box.” They look so much better when they’re scattered across the page a bit. With the addition of the wall photo, they’ve got something to rest against other than the side of the page, plus, stacking them in the center provides a nice connection between both sides of the spread.
All became clear when I added in a grey/black background for my second page. The booklet was feeling too light… lots of bright, pastel-ish colors. Even though Martens doesn’t use this shade much in his work, I do. Gotta inject a bit of myself into these spreads, right? A dark color-block really brought out the object stack and created good separation between the spread’s pages. I sorta had to give myself “permission” to bring black into the booklet, but I’m glad I did. If I’d added another orange color block, it would’ve completely drowned out the vibrancy in the work I’m showcasing.
The Teacher
Next on the list was my teacher spread, as it had been another major problem area in my previous draft. Too many portraits, zero work, and a boring, hospital-wall-esque shade of blue.
I stared at this spread for a bit, shook my head like an etch-a-sketch to wipe my brain of this blunder, and started scouring Google for more inspiration.
I found this beauty about 30 minutes into my search.
Karel Martens is big into layering colors, so finding a single-shade monoprint was surprising. I love this orange… the way it dominates the page is so gorgeous. As I was thinking of ways to use this print, I ended up flipping it sideways and realizing how cool it would look as a full-page “frame” for my body copy. I slapped it onto a spread in InDesign and liked what I saw.
Around this time, I also started experimenting with how to show Martens’ mentors / students without using portraits. I remembered that I’d originally represented Adam Roskam with a photo of his bookbinding press, and this inspired me to dig into the work of Martens’ mentors / students for pieces that might serve as “portraits.” This was a good move, as their work is much more interesting than their faces. Not saying this in a rude way, of course…
I recreated the orange print in Illustrator for a crispy, high-quality image, adding my own texturing and faux-pencil notations along the way. Then, I did some playful image layering on the right page to help bust up the spread’s uniformity. Digging this spread more already.
Table of Contents
Next up was my table of contents. Little refresher of its’ original sorry state:
All of this had to go. Coming off of the high of successfully reworking my Teacher spread, I felt like I’d struck gold (or at least bronze) with my full-page, single-color print motif, and I was excited to carry it forward to more spreads. I went on the hunt for another single-color print, which proved challenging as these works are on the rarer side.
I eventually found this specimen buried in some Dutch design forum:
One color: check. This is a poster for one of Martens’ exhibitions, so it makes sense that the actual printed bits are toned down so as not to distract from the information up top.
The dense informational clusters beneath the ink would serve a table of contents well. I split the poster in half (just one yellow block would do) and went about recreating the whole thing in Illustrator.
I bolded the relevant page information and made everything else a lighter shade of grey. I’ll go in later with some texturing and blur the Dutch bits out even more… wouldn’t want people to think they’re meant to be read.
The inside cover of my table of contents spread was also looking rough. I’d originally had the TOC take up two entire pages, but that was now off the table (get it? table?) Eugh. I was inspired by some of the example booklets in Brett’s key… many of them featured a pull quote or a designer portrait on the first page. Quotes are another area I felt I was lacking in, so including one on P1 would be beneficial.
I was digging the little Martens picture from my first Artist spread draft, but was not a fan of where I was featuring it in the booklet. I scooched it to the inside cover, keeping it at a small size. I’d been struggling with distinguishing Martens from his little friends, but as I was gazing into the depths of the yellow color block on P2, I had an idea. I’d duotone-ify everyone but Martens. I use this effect to obscure rather than highlight the other three folks, as yellow duotone is low-contrast and actually brings attention to high-contrast B&W Martens.
Don’t worry, I didn’t keep the quote justified like this. I moved letters around until everything flowed nicely around the photo, still remaining legible. A dark-grey color block was also my savior here. In a renegade stroke of inspiration, I made the yellow color block extend onto the inside cover, bridging the gap between both sides of the spread. I know I disrupted the sacred composition of a Martens print, but it was for a good cause.
The Artist
Hmmm… how can I bring both work and color into this spread?
I’d anticipated a major difficulty in showcasing anything but portraits in the Artist spread: in the essay, I talk about Martens’ fine art background, but there are no records of this work online. The majority of it is probably lost. I can’t just slap some monoprint photos in a corner and call it good.
A beacon of hope: I’d been playing with lots of duotone effects for B&W photos and loving the results. This is a strategy I could use to apply some vibrancy without using drab blue-grey color blocking.
I also found this cool ass portrait of Karel thuggin out with his arms crossed. This photo was revealed to me on my 3rd or 4th “karel martens portrait” search on Google Images… had no idea it existed before. It’s like God waited until the time was right to reveal it to me.
I’ve also been continuously exposed to this particular monoprint because it’s the first result for “karel martens work.”
Put duotone, gangster Karel Martens, and this monoprint together, and this is what we get…
I’m really proud of my solution to my initial conundrum. This checks all the boxes: vibrant, showcases work, and features a distinction between pages. I also wouldn’t have been content with just a plain, full-bleed B&W portrait, so this is a good way to jazz it up.
Just for shits n’ giggles — my first idea for a half & half duotone composition. Special thanks to Lorem Ipsum Dolor for being the cherry on top of this doodoo sundae:
My first attempts at typesetting on this composition involved working against the monoprint rather than with it. I kept trying to force this rounded indent into my bodycopy, before realizing I was fighting a losing battle and rethinking my approach.
I ended up lightening the colors on the print’s right half considerably, helping the bodycopy to remain legible. I was then free to take up as many columns as I wanted. I added a quote to bring a little contrast into the composition, along with a small reference image for the monoprint, showing what the actual piece looks like.
Everyone keeps saying the monoprint looks “suggestive,” but I’m going to ignore that bit.
Intermission — Split-Second Brett Crit in the Last 2 Minutes of Class
Oh my god. I’m saved. Brett likes where I’m going and says it’s a huge improvement! I am so, so glad my work paid off — I reworked my whole aesthetic palette between Tuesday and Thursday class, which was a lot to take on. If this one wasn’t a winner I would’ve pulled a Grant Mowry and transferred to Biology.
Timeline
My timeline is probably the spread which has changed the least. It was initially just black (booooooring) which was the first trait to go. I slapped some orange on in Photoshop just to see how it would look with some color, and there was an immediate improvement.
From there, I went on to bring in my four “palette” colors (which were not planned, but arose through the booklet process): cornflower blue, vermillion, lemon yellow, and fuscia. These color separations don’t necessarily designate any 4 periods in KM’s life — they’re more of a vague way to separate clusters of important dates. During revision I might make a key to show they actually mean something.
Big fan of the distressing I get to add after a composition is finalized… I call it “shittifying” in my head, but for the sake of keeping this blog family (and employer) friendly, we’ll stick with distressing. Once I was happy with my colors, I slathered everything with rubbed ink effects, smudges, blurs, and textures. It’s like frosting a cake.
The Designer
The last spread to be updated (and the one I fought with the most). Before I landed on something good, I had major beef with this spread. I wanted to print out a photo of this spread and stick it to a dartboard and throw things at it. I wanted to chew this spread up and spit it into a pulpy little ball and kick it.
I left this one for later because I thought it would be simple. I was liking the motif I’d created with the gridded boxes, and the only real edit I had in mind was changing up sizing for less uniformity.
I ended up scrapping this alltogether. It felt like just too much museum card motif, and given the fact that the timeline came right after this spread (which was total paper-texture overload) my original plan had to go.
I started halfheartedly scattering work, looking for a composition that tickled my fancy. No luck. It was missing something.
From there, I brought in another color-block monoprint, as Brett had mentioned wanting to see one more instance of that motif when I showed him some reworked spreads. This was one I sort of made up, which is a departure from my whole preexisting work rule. Every color I was trying felt gross, and the whole think kept looking too similar to my Teacher spread. Finding a good layout for his work samples was putting me through it. I needed to switch it up… what to do?
Even though I’d ditched my original Teacher spread, I was still a fan of the block-column layout I’d used to frame content. I took this idea and applied it to my Designer spread, using Martens’ weird almost-3D rectangle silhouettes as content boxes.
Now we’re getting somewhere. Everything was feeling too symmetrical, so I changed up the frame dimensions to give more space to Martens’ work. The black background was just logical — it works for the light/dark order I’ve established in my booklet. I like this spread solution, as it gives the suggestion of a large-scale Martens print without actually using a third one. If the audience can pick up on the similarity between these shapes & the yellow form on the T.O.C, then I will have done my job well.
At Brett’s recommendation, I brought in some playfulness to the composition of KM’s work. This brings in some nice continuity with the Teacher spread, which is also whimsically unordered.
The Luminary
Saved the chillest spread for last.
There wasn’t a crazy amount of editing to be done to the general layout of this spread. Since I’d developed a whole new aesthetic plan since I’d last touched The Luminary, it wasn’t too hard to apply this to a new version. Edits made: black color blocking, slight page overlap, got rid of the painfully ugly orange 12, enacted the line printing plan for my pull quote.
Next steps mostly involved texturizing and adding in that color-overlap motif from my poster to some of the letters.
Boom! Good on spreads! Now to something I’ve been dreading… the cover. I don’t know if we all remember my original draft (hopefully we don’t) but I think I’m essentially mandated to provide a refresher here.
Interesting in theory, doesn’t really make sense in practice. I still like the idea of having “ation” appear uniformly across the front & a variety of adjectives being revealed on the back, but it’s a little too “out there” for the intregue factor. Sure, all the adjectives relate to Karel, but are they ever mentioned again in the booklet? Do they connect to section titles or something? No. Scrap ‘em.
The only other idea I had for a metaphor was representing KM’s process: a washer and paper on the front, a beautiful monoprint made with said washer on the back. I whipped this up on Monday night before Tuesday’s cover crit:
Alright, this is decent enough. I really started to dislike it during crit, though. When it was laid out on the table alongside the other covers, I started to notice how sparse and bland it looked… So! Much! Beige! There comes a point where I need to pull back on the paper texture thing.
Brett reassured me that the concept was good, it could just be executed differently. Jazz it up. Maybe there are more elements on the front cover. Don’t be afraid to un-clump all the important info from the top right corner.
I came into class on Thursday with this version. I’m much happier with it! I took the whole process-representation thing to the extreme and brought in more elements of KM’s practice — his cutting mat, a print with the color palette I’d initially worked off of, his brayer, layered paper, basically everything I could make out from a photo of his desk clutter.
My favorite part of this whole mess is how it’s actually organized into thirds. I brought my InDesign grid into Photoshop to set this up, just so it wouldn’t be total chaos. Everything was collaged together digitally — lots of stock photos here that I painstakingly removed the watermarks from.
Notes on Folios & Details
From the get-go, I had a folio idea I was very excited about: a flipbook-style progression showing the construction of a KM floret, pictured below.
Each of these ended up on a separate spread, always in the bottom right corner so they could (hypothetically) be flipped through as an “animation!” I don’t really incorporate florets anywhere else in the booklet, so I felt that this would be a nice nod to them.
I also want to point out my captioning system. I was inspired by KM’s museum cards, which all feature typewriter lettering. Using a straight-up typewriter font would feel a little on-the-nose, so I opted for Roboto Mono, which really adds to the printed feel. For all captions (except these dates) I use 6pt Roboto Mono, sometimes bolding or italicizing depending on the information I’m sharing.
For my bodycopy, I use Monotype Grotesque Regular, Martens’ favorite typeface, at 10pt. The header is set in JL Pirelli, a typeface KM helped to design, at 27pt. Pirelli is also used for the occasional quote.
3 typefaces! I was originally going to stick with Monotype Grotesque and Roboto, but MT Grotesque headings felt bland, and I appreciated the weird geometry of Pirelli.
Final Booklet & Reflection
It’s over. It’s really over!
This project was a struggle for me. Not the worst one imaginable, but a struggle nonetheless. I’ve come out the other end feeling older, wiser, and much more confident in my non-poster design skills… I think that’s why I was going so wrong halfway through the project. My original 3 drafts were super poster-y, and as a result, the transition into my full booklet draft was extremely clunky! Spreads are not my strong suit, but I’ve learned a considerable amount in this project and have conquered my publication design fears. I think I could take on another project like this after a nice cool-down period… I’m excited to dive into After Effects and get a break from InDesign.
I’m happy with my final booklet! Since I crafted some interesting motifs, I think I was able to showcase KM’s work in an unexpected way. My favorite spreads are the ones where I really surprised myself — the table of contents, the artist, and the teacher, are my top 3 as all arose from “eureka” moments in the darkness of creative exhaustion. I’m also proud of the story I’m telling in my spreads. I think separating Martens’ practice into five labels provided great scaffolding for my booklet, and prevented me from getting off-track. It’s also a very fitting way to explain the life of a man who has never conformed to the label of just “designer.”
There are definitely some things I could clean up during revision — I’ll probably wait and see what Brett says before I get into editing, as I am in dire need of a couple days off. Super happy for all of my classmates — it was incredible to see the outcomes of all our efforts during our gallery walk today. Everyone has put in so much work, and it shows. I’m proud to say my cohort never disappoints!
See you all for the video…
