Project 5
Booklet
2019
Individual Project
About the Project
The project was a booklet on quotes that may come off as hurtful in different ways, assigned as the final project in the Communication Design Fundamentals class, taught by Suzanne Choi. The goal of the project to make typography and grid system decisions in practice to augment the content on the pages, as well as to use color and visual elements cohesively with textual elements of the book. The book was required to have been printed and bound, with at least 16 pages.
Project Process
The idea for the book was to have a series of spreads covering a variety of hurtful quotes that follow different themes, as well as having photos or infographics that illustrates the theme from a different angle. The purpose of the book was to show, not tell, and as such there is minimal textual description or explanation, and the goal is for the reader to gain an understanding of the problem from the quotes and graphics themselves.
Initially, as shown in the above sketches, I considered having a variety of layouts, including photos that appeared on different parts of the 3x3 grid, as well as content that spans the 2 pages of a spread. However, I elected to adopt a simpler design with each spread containing a full-page photo/graphic opposing a page with a theme and number of quotes related to the theme. I chose to use a relatively classical font (Adobe Caslon Pro) to suit the solemn nature of the quotes on the pages.
Before the interim crit, I was unsure of how to organize the quotes in a way that is visually appealing, but also disorganized to illustrate the nature of the quotes. As such, to request feedback, I had some pages that were organized with a line below each quote, and some that weren’t (below). I also had a mostly white color scheme, but with some darker photos. I received feedback that the underlines helped partition the pages and establish hierarchy. I also received feedback that a unified dark color scheme would benefit the consistency and aesthetic of the project, which was supposed to be more serious and sad. There were also some problems with margins not being correctly used or inconsistent, which I fixed.
For the final version, I adopted the dark color scheme by having a background colors and inverting the colors as necessary. and I finally settled on having four colors for the lines and titles (green, blue, white, dark red) represent the four themes covered in the book, but still having all of the text be white. I made the design decision to use subtle colors to carve out the 3x3 row grid, and have them be represented in a small 2x2 square pattern on the cover. I believe that this hinting with colors, as well as the horizontal lines, tie the themes and the book together without having the primary colors distract from the nature of the quotes.
