Final Project: Design Book
The Cultural Appropriation Project: Final Design Book (CDF Fall 2017)
Introduction
For my final project in Communication Design Fundamentals, I was challenged to create my own book. This was definitely a daunting task. However, as my project progressed, it became more and more manageable. I truly integrated every facet of the course.
Book Content
Last semester, I completed a six-month long independent team project on cultural appropriation. The idea initially stemmed from a music course I took my sophomore year. During the course, we discussed pop stars and their stage costumes. I noticed a strong pattern. These artists often wore cultural items in order to seem more exotic and exciting on stage. I didn’t understand why this left me with an uneasy feeling. I am personally biracial (half-White, half-Chinese). I wanted to explore how my cultural identity affected my views on these costumes. For my final project, I created an interactive doll dress-up game, “Create A Popstar.” I worked with a designer to create a game inspired with real outfits worn by pop stars. I presented my final project to the class and got really good feedback. People were intrigued by the topic. Cultural approption is such a difficult topic to understand. People are also at varying places of knowledge on the topic. Some do not know what appropriation even means, while others are extremely fired up and have 100+ examples of cultural appropriation. I wanted to turn my intrigue into something tangible to reach a better understanding for myself and others.
My project last semester was funded by a small undergraduate research grant, thanks to Carnegie Mellon. My team consisted of people I recruited to be historians, designers, artists, and developers. We spent the semester interviewing, collecting items, creating narratives, curating information, and installing our gallery show. We ultimately had a great turn out of 100+ attendees to our show in April at Carnegie Mellon’s Frame Gallery. We also presented our summarized findings at 2017 Meeting of the Minds.
After the show, I was so proud. However, I didn’t have a means to show how much work was put into the entire arduous process. I decided to use my final project as an opportunity to showcase one of my favorite projects I’ve ever been a part of. But, there was so much content to work with! I had interviews, narratives, item documentation, and gallery photos. For the scope of my design final project, I decided to scale down my project and create a book meant to preview the concept I’ve learned so much about.
Inspiration
For initial inspiration, I looked mostly at existing books that had interviews and portraits with people. I looked closely at Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York and how he presented their narratives. I was espeically drawn the simplicity he used. His book was just carefully placed portraits and well-aligned text. I drew inspiration specifically from the cover. Humans of New York is written simply with scale that spreads the entire width of the page. Underneath the cover, Stanton places his photos with even spacing.
For more inspiration on the layout of my spreads, I looked to the resources given to me in class. In “Making or Breaking the Grid,” I was influenced to use the modular grid. The modular grid gave me the freedom to highlight a portrait while also having space to add the corresponding narrative. The simplicity is necessary in order to create an easy and digestible reading experience for people.
Ideation
I had a lot of trouble initially starting because I was daunted by all my content. I knew that I could not include every aspect of the show due to the time constraints of the project. I had to be selective in the material that I chose to show while still maintaining my overall narrative of the project’s process. I eventually successfully narrowed down to depict half my interviews and their corresponding quotes.
I began by ideating the form of my book. I planned to create an accordion style binding. For my accordion style plan, I wanted both sides to be distinct. One side could be the project process while the other could be the interviews and portraits. I later deviated from this style because I wanted to synthesize my narrative into one and decided to saddle sitch my book.
Initial Spreads
In mid-November, I received really important feedback that ultimately shaped my final product. I was using the modular grid, however, I had not fully utilized it for all spreads. I attempted to make my title page appear to be similar to Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York book. However, my title page was critiqued to be a bit overwhelming and the title should be more prominent and clear. I was told I needed to provide more context of my project beyond this. This proved to be one of the most challenging aspects of the project.
This critique made me think critically about how to encapsulate my project in an introduction. I also got criticism for the overwhelming text and close tracking. I was also told to think about my alignment within the grid. I took all these critiques to heart and progressed by directly addressing them.
Final Spreads
Final Highlights
Overall, this project really pushed me as a new designer. All of the semester’s class projects combined into this one. Some specific design choices I made included Futura as my font. I believe it properly addressed this modern debate with accessibility and clarity. Accessibility was key to the project and I chose to make my final book only a small 6.5' x 3.5'. I also decided to print on uniformly weighted paper. This is because I wanted the book to be easily picked up and read. My ultimately goal is to have these books have the ability to be mass produced and spread around to gain awareness of the topic. to give this I used my knowledge of typography along with design fundamentals of spacing in order to produce my final product. This proved to be very rewarding.
