Project 5: Grids, Style & Format
About the Project
Project 5 involved all using all the concepts and skills in the case to create a book on a topic of our interest. For this project, I really wanted to create a zine. The focus of the zines was inspired from sketches I’ve done in the past that involved these alien like creatures. I carried the style of my sketches, with thing lines and the red and blue spot colors, over to my illustrations.
First Iteration
As I was doing research, I was drawn to the zines with hand illustrations accompanied by text, and knew I wanted to do something similar. I came across this particular zine that utilized layering with velum, and I thought that was something that I could adapt to my concepts and illustrations.
Initially, I focused on this idea of a “double take”. It was meant to convey how the viewer does a double take when they realize that ordinary scenes in their daily lives are not what they seem. I represented this by illustrating alien forms on velum and laying it over an illustration of a normal scene in daily life. I wanted the overall mood to be somewhat eerie and haunting, so I focused on a very monotone “voice” to describe the situation in the illustration with a small line of text. While printing for the interim critique, I found it difficult to work with the velum. For time purposes, I directly drew the aliens over the printed scenes to make sure it lined up. The velum was a lot thicker than I expected, so the illustrations underneath weren’t showing up as much as I wanted them to. This made it difficult during the interim critique, as people were confused about the relationship between the illustrations, and I had to provide instructions on how to read the book (ex: press down to see full effects). In terms of sizing, I chose to print at a 4x5.5in. dimension, as I felt the smaller size corresponded well with the delicate drawings.
Since I was working with two different types of paper, I sketched out the layout of my book. I had to rely on a lot of trial and errors to make sure that the correct alien illustrations would line up with their respective base illustrations.
During the interim critique, I asked for feedback on book sizing and the ease of understanding of the concept. In terms of the visuals of the book, people felt that the sizing and use of color works well to convey the playful nature of the sketches. However, to make reading and understanding easier, I could reverse the ordinary/double take scenes, place words on the top layer, group similar things together to show a progression of events. In addition, people wanted a poetic description of the book to better explain the concept.
Second Iteration
After the interim critique, I continued to refine my sketches. I started to feel that the alien creatures were more playful than scary, so I reformatted the narration to be a poem that described the intrusiveness of these little creatures. The opening and closing of the poems provided the audience with a better idea of what was going on. At this point, I switched the title from “double take” to “invasion!”.
In this iteration, I took in the suggestions of my peers and the feedback I received during individual critique. I flipped the order of the alien and base illustrations. Now, the base illustrations and text were printed on the velum while the alien illustrations were printed on the normal paper. I also ordered the sketches so its progression followed the narrator’s typical day, from morning tonight.
During individual critique, Mackenzie and I discussed how some of the sketches seemed to stop abruptly at the edges, and that the alien sketches seemed to just be floating. To fix this, I added a border around all the pages. I felt that this helped to group the alien and base sketches together, and also gave the feeling that the audience was looking into a window of someone’s life. I was also struggling with what to put on some additional blank pages, so Mackenzie suggested that I could actually put my title on the second spread, and have something else on the cover. I thought that an illustration of alien hands reaching out of the book across the cover would work well with the “invasion” concept.
At this point, I started to refine the typography. I wrote out the word “invasion” for the title page by hand so that it fit better with the hand-illustrated style of the rest of the book. For the narration text, I decided to go with the most basic serif font provided by the Adobe programs, minion pro. I felt that this traditional font juxtaposed well against the more organic illustrations. In addition, the basic nature of the font turns the focus to the sketches.
Final Iteration
Final Reflection
The final printing required a lot of planning and assistance, but overall it turned out well. I really enjoyed seeing everyone’s final products and hearing the responses about mine. One feedback that I received during final critique was that I could have utilized the blank middle page better, perhaps fill it completely with doodles. I think that was a great suggestion and the only thing I wish I could change about my project. Overall, This project gave me a lot of room to explore in terms of concept, materials, and my skill sets. I’m really proud of the final product and this has definitely inspired me to continue designing and even making zines in the future.
