Books, Stories, and South Sudan
On a recent quiet Friday here at the Quicksand studio in Bangalore the team decided to have a bit of a competition of sorts around book-making. We mocked up a generic template in InDesign that we all worked off of, but otherwise were left to our own devices in terms of what the subject matter and visuals were. The only constraint was time: everyone had to have their book done by the end of the day.
This was my first foray into designing a book per se, though I had some experience working with InDesign from the days of creating a monthly newsletter for our sanitation initiative Project Sammaan. Initially at a loss for what my book would be about, I decided to capitalize on the journal I kept during a month-long research project in South Sudan. The journal itself is around 50 typed pages, so rather than try to incorporate it lock stock into the book I opted instead to extract just a line or two from each day and pair it with one of the thousands of pictures I took whilst in-country.
We presented the digital versions of our finished books to each other, then sent them off for printing. Without further ado, is what I produced:
The experience of trying to create something creative and interesting in such a constrained time frame was incredible, as was seeing how each of my colleagues approached the same challenge. The books ran the gamut of topics and this mini-project shed a lot of light into what resonates with those I work with. It was certainly an experience that we look forward to repeating, and sharing, in the near future.
Originally published at kevinshane.me on November 29, 2016.
