CDF_Book Final_Project 5

Curving Scoliosis

Proposal

I would like to create a book that advocates for a new medical brace for scoliosis patients — a brace I designed myself.

This is based on an essay I wrote last year for Brett Yasko’s Human Experience in Design class. The essay needs some additional edits but it basically outlines how the current the current night brace is used to prevent further curvature for children with idiopathic scoliosis and while it is effective in preventing scoliosis from becoming worse, side effects from its use includes the development of an asymmetrical body due to over-straightening (slightly counter-productive, I know).

Within this essay, I proposed a design that alters how the brace is fitted around the patient which would decrease the chances of over-straightening and improve patient compliance.

My book would start with a brief introduction of my scoliosis then move into information about scoliosis in general, the brace, its pitfalls and how my design solves those problems.

Illustration Style Inspiration

Thumbnail Sketches

Sample Spread

Spreads I made after choosing a color palette

Spreads I settled on for the Inter-rim Critique

For the most part, I received positive feedback from my peers during the inter-rim critique. They responded well to my color schemes and my abstracted illustrations but there was a consensus that some spreads seemed more cluttered than others so there were suggestions to continue spreading out dense information and balancing negative space so that the reader doesn’t feel overloaded. There were also suggestions to try playing with transparent papers to layer spreads together to convey information and to incorporate more imagery of the x-rays.

Spread Designs that Didn’t Make the Cut

At this point in my process, I was struggling with how to resolve the fact that this book acts as a proposal even though it doesn’t necessarily operate in the same manner. But after talking it out, I realized it’s better to have moments of visual rest and better a color block or a bold, simple call to action rather than another arbitrary x-ray.

Proof Print (with bleeds)

After I printed out my test print, I got feedback from a friend who is the most critical (in a good way) person I know and he made comments mostly about the sequencing of my spreads. He argued that I needed to rearrange various pages because it didn’t make sense logically. For instance, he argued the “we need a better brace” needed to be gone because it didn’t make sense to have a call to action when I haven’t even explained the context of my problem. He also convinced me to switch the how to wear the magnetic brace with the significance spread because it was of less priority and it was better to keep the momentum from the spread talking about the magnetic brace in general.

Additionally, from a printing standard, there were a lot of mistakes. For instance, I didn’t have a wide enough margin for pages on the right which made it hard to read when your perfect binding is covering about a good portion of your text. There were also obvious miscalculations as to where alignment was on the front and back covers. Also, on the proof I just completely botched the gluing process because I was too slow.

Final Spreads

Reflection and Side Notes

I’m really happy with this project. I think it challenged me in every conceptual and physical way. As you know, printmaking is my concentration and I specifically make a lot of different types of books but never have I made a book that dealt with such a formal, complex, and dense topic while educating the common man.

Only thing is (of course) 30 mins after critique, I realized an arrow had been shifted over and a spread could’ve had an extra sentence that would’ve made the section more connected to the bigger theme. I’ve come to terms with it though and made those fixes in the final spreads up above.

Some things I wish I mentioned during the final critique: the x-ray scan is an x-ray of my actual spine circa 2012. This project has a lot of subtle personal moments and that’s one of them. Unsurprisingly, I had to jump through a lot of hoops just to get a copy of it and it wasn’t because the archives were in upstate NY but rather, it was because this office still operated by snail mail and signing off permissions for my parents to pick it up was a huge hassle.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with and again, super proud. If you want to see the final documentation it’s here. Thanks for the awesome class and the opportunity to expand my visual design skills!