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Final Reflection 🙂🎉
What were you happiest about your book (this can include more than one thing)?
I am very happy with the physical presence of the book; I believe I achieved the ominous look-mood I was going for. I’m also proud of how well I pushed myself to try new material (plexiglass) and binding methods, despite being afraid of not having prior skillsets or experience with Coptic stitching. Additionally, I surprised myself with how well I can edit images to portray the ideas/time/mood I was attempting to demonstrate. For instance, in the It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis fiction spreads, I think I did a pretty good job in giving an “olden time” effect, while still demonstrating the idea of censorship and ignorantly hiding facts from American citizens. After flipping through the page spreads a few times, I had tweaked a lot of images to be “darker” and follow the same editing method just so there isn’t too much disconnect with the stark diversity of images I used.
Overall, the strike was a real downer. It was hard keeping myself motivated on my term project topic, and managing my time, despite time-managing to my best ability. The product I produced, in the end, is still something I am extremely happy about.
What would you (given more time and resources) have done differently?
This might be a long list, sadly.
First of all, I wish I had done more iterations of each fiction/non-fiction spread. When I started off my project, I had quite a few iterations for Nineteen Eighty-Four, Fahrenheit 451, and Space Odessey 2001. As time went on and neared the holiday break, it was difficult to keep myself designing a lot. As a result, I stuck with my first idea that came to mind, such as in It Can’t Happen Here, The Sheep Look Up, and a few non-fiction spreads. I wish I had more time to create different ideas, which may have improved the thought behind my spreads.
Also, I wish I had created more content. As mentioned in earlier blog postings, I had to cut down “two chapters” due to health and time constraints. Before I started to work on my project, I envisioned creating this huge, thick, layered book with a lot of overwhelming visual content. I feel that adding those two chapters would have helped achieve what I wanted.
On the same note, I envisioned using a thick plexiglass for the cover/back. A peer of mine in our class used a thick plexiglass for their experimental book. After asking them about cost and where they bought the material from, I realized I would be spending 6x the money I had budgeted for my project and would be spending my entire day commuting to North York (the store is called Plastic World). Due to money and time constraints, I was not able to go to North York to purchase this plexiglass. Also, the website is not organized and does not have a stock count of sizes, pricing, and how many items are available. It would be difficult to rely too much on commuting so far only to be disappointed with the store not having what I wanted.
If you had to describe your book to a friend (without having the book, or any images of it handy) what would you say?
This is a book that compares fictional dystopias, that were written and predicted in earlier years, to dystopian realities that are happening today. The book is called “Are We There Yet?”, which questions if our current world is living in a dystopia that was once cautioned about. For instance, Donald Trump’s election and the demise of America was actually predicted from a book called It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. That book clearly shows how electing someone who is inexperienced, irrationally outspoken, believes in dictatorship/fascism, and discriminates against citizens based off of their country/culture of origin could lead to the demise of America. It is clear that today, we have chosen to ignore all these scary signs of how a leader like this can create a dystopian environment. My goal with my term project is to give enough visual and written evidence to readers to nudge them to think about the dystopian cautions we constantly choose to ignore and are always shocked about. This book was created to give readers a heads-up on how they can take preventative actions to stop our world from becoming a full-on disastrous dystopian reality.
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It’s been a long week
A photo of my planned calendar before the winter break started verses my edits and accommodations after winter break started. I decided to remove 2 ‘chapters’ from my book (Neuromancer by William Gibson and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley) due to the fact that...
My book was already leaning towards 84+ pages
The printing costs and coming up with unique ideas every day was difficult
Wrist pains were just signs for me to stop working
Difficult to plan around when I was gonna print considering some close-by printing shops I was dependent on updated their holiday hours very late/only a few days before Christmas
But nevertheless, I got some printing done, and finally cut/folded my pages!
I made a template on white paper, the same length of the width, and poked all the holes.
I accidentally folded too deep and cut the papers 😭 It’s going to be fine! I reprinted at York, while I was there to laser-cut my plexiglass. I was a little disappointed that some of the subtle textures I wanted to show in the printing (especially the 1984 one) didn’t show up, even after going back and editing the document to lighten it up. I didn’t have enough time/resources/money to do the printing job all over again, so I just took what I had.
Thankfully, the plexiglass laser cutting went smoothly. I was hoping the etched “are we there yet?” titles would appear a little more translucent, but every time I scrub the plexiglass etch with a spare toothbrush and some cleaning fluid, I get a little bit more of the “plexiglass dust” out of the grooves. What I did wish, however, was for a thicker plexiglass. Mine is 0.1cm, while I’ve seen others use 0.5cm. Due to distance constraints, I was only able to purchase the 0.1cm glass.
And now, time to sew it all together! I was between using a black or white thread. I leaned towards black more; the white stood out way too much, and there aren’t much “pure white” elements within my book itself.
Some issues I ran into: waxed thread made a huge mess around my work space and stuck to the plexiglass, which was difficult to clean.... I had to opt out for unwaxed thread. The problem? Lots of tangling ....
But at last, it’s done! Practicing stitching prior to this made this process a lot faster, I am very happy with my product.... time to go to the studio!
Before I threw out all my prototypes, I decided to take a photo before I threw everything out (except for the black notepad at the top, which I now plan on reusing 🤔)
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I lived through my first ever Coptic stitching session
Since last week (or maybe 2 weeks ago? who’s counting anymore...), I decided to add an extra 0.5″ on each side, making my book 8.5x5.5″ in size. I wish it was larger, but the printing costs would be worse than it already is, and I need to account for bleeds when printing.
I decided that before I went ahead and stitched my final book, I should practice my Coptic stitching since I’ve never really done that and I want to see how capable I am.
I began by calculating how many holes I wanted. I knew I wanted a lot along the spine, so I opted for 5 holes, about 0.92″ away from each other (my spine is 5.5″ in length).
And so, I cut out some paper along the size of my book (there are 11 signatures, with 8 pages in each, giving a total of 88 pages for my book). Then, I poked holes. I made sure to number each page just so I know that I’m on the right track when stacking them.
I drilled the same holes into draft matte boards, which will be used as the hardcover and back. For the final one, I will be using plexiglass, which will be laser-cut.
And so the stitching process begins! I waxed and double-threaded some old blue embroidery thread, put on SeaLemon’s tutorial, and began stitching.
https://youtu.be/ue52htX3j0k
(adding the link for my references)
I noticed that as I was working with the double-threaded string, I was running into a lot of tangling problems.
I’ve even gotten so frustrated, that I’ve pulled the string really hard through the paper, and tore 1 or 2 holes (whoops).
But after 2 hours, I finally did it!
What did I learn?
- Be patient, don’t tug the string too hard
- Double-threading is a nightmare. If I can find a thicker black string, I will use that
- I may have looped incorrectly on the ends of the book, so I need to be aware of that
- The pages are not stacked equally, probably due to a poor job in either cutting, or keeping them straight together when poking holes
Overall, I’m proud of my first try. I thought I was going to get frustrated and rage quit, but 2 hours later, I have a decent prototype! Hopefully, all is well when I go ahead and do the final stitching.
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a December 22 update
it’s been hard working through the holiday season, but I’m slowly trying to get things done.
I stuck with the This Can’t Happen Here spreads for this week
If the picture quality is destroyed, the quote in Trump’s mouth says: “FAKE NEWS IS AT AN ALL TIME HIGH. WHERE IS THEIR APOLOGY TO ME FOR ALL OF THE INCORRECT STORIES?????????????” oh, how childish.
I thought that quote resonated nicely with the censoring of bad things about the president from It Can’t Happen Here. I initially wanted to add more quotes, but I liked the way Trump’s close up looked stern and uncomfortable.
The issue that I’ve had with these spreads is the opening page, and the order of the other pages (fiction vs. nonfiction, book vs. in real life). I think I’ll stick with this order for now.
With regards to the opening pages, I don’t know if I should stick with the black or red scribbles. I liked red because it was bold, striking, and it let through some of the hidden accents from Trump’s quote. It also showcases colours from the American flag. I fear, however, that it is way too shocking and almost simulated bloodshed as soon as open up to the opening page.
I liked black because it was neutral, it fits with most of the other spreads, but I don’t know if it’s becoming too expected and repetitive.
I tried a real photo of trump, but didn’t like the flow. I would just keep opening spreads abstract from now on. I moved around the scribbles, but didn’t like how they took up too much space on the spreads. I put some of the It Can’t Happen Here quotes on the back, but it looked off for certain colours. I even tried different colours (blue scribbles were terrible to get right in CMYK, so I just gave up my dreams of ever coming close to getting the blue from Trump’s spreads).
I’m still going to keep thinking about this. I’m leaning towards red, but every time I look at black, I like it more. I might try to define the red scribble more so that it looks “more stripey” and “layered”. I’m thinking it can start to look like the American flag’s stripes? I’ll have to try that.
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a December 14 Update
This week, I’ve been thinking really hard with regards to organization and refining what I already have (& exploring It Can’t Happen Here!!!).
Firstly, I played around with distorting the reader’s flow in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Here’s a detail shot (I swear it’s not as yellow as InDesign makes it to be). The way you would read this is by reading the top line of the 1st page, then top line of 2nd, top line of 3rd, then 4th, and then 2nd line of first page, and so on...
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With regards to organization, my idea was thinking that within each section (Surveillance, Fascism, etc.), I would rearrange the pages between fiction and real life examples. Initially, I was gonna rearrange it within the entire book, but I realized that it might be too complicated
The question is: Since I plan to define sections now, is it worth adding a table of contents page?
I also developed some intro pages and epigraph by Aldous Huxley. Initially I wanted to have a plexiglass (or even just the sheet of paper) for the intro page, but I realized it would knock out all the holes in the letters. A stroked type looked off. The Trump collective would be the end paper.
What else did I work on? Ah yes, censorship in This Can’t Happen Here. I went for an old look, which contrasts with a lot of the super-hyper-tech world some books present themselves in. Not sure if I like it yet?
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What Is Even Happening To My Term Project
I was still dissatisfied with my Space Odessey spread, so I revisited it. I was way into the whole ideology of "making the reader uncomfortable, disturbed, and confused" "that's what dystopia is all about" .... but as I read my book as a story, I realize that it doesn’t flow as well as I wanted it to. I realized that it was way too cramped. So I decided to spread it out.
I also decided to explore a more landscape format instead of conventional portrait format... This format reminds me of a catalog, but from the way I’m creating such random un-templated pieces, my project is really starting to feel like a scrapbook of dystopia. Not sure if I like the landscape...
Another thing I thought of whilst re-creating this spread was potentially having the “dialogues” scattered across the book, where I could put HAL’s dialogue on the odd pages, and Dave's dialogue on the even? This way, it disrupts the natural flow of reading. It also works out because you can always use the juxtaposition of the good human (even) vs. evil AI-ready-to-take-over-the-world (odd). Not sure if this idea will stick around though...
Anyways, onto other dystopian books...
I was trying to figure out what the heck I was doing for Nineteen Eighty-Four.... I didn’t know how to use typography to its full advantage. What was I trying to portray? I gave up on the red font exploration and looked into ways I can interpret text with the quote:
It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called. (1.5.65)
I looked into pixelation and blurring ... even asking some friends what certain effects mean to them...
And so I decided to explore pixelation, only because the quote relates to the telescreen and the anxiety of hiding from it.
While Googling some inspiration for pixelated typography. I came across this. I really loved the detailing of this.
After playing around with Photoshop a lot more than I should have, I came up with this. It was difficult figuring out the limit of how many effects I can possibly squeeze into one spread. I think I’ll back off at this for now...
I also explored some spreads from Fahrenheit 451!
And with everything else I’ve done, why don’t we turn up the crazy digital effects a notch???
Exploring real-life TV subtitles, the black box around the text is interrupted with static and specks .... it would look weird to have a nice clean box without any mess added to it.
And now the editing...
And so, this is where it came to be. I played around with a photo of a happy/kind of creepy family dinner from Archive.org (Thanks for the website reference, Reg!) I warped the textbook and played around with the actual family photo and TV bar colours. Not sure if the colours of this spread are going to stand out way too much compared to my Nineteen Eighty-Four and Space Odessey black and white spreads... I have no idea how to tackle this issue.
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And so, here is what I have so far. I have some next step ideas on how to explore “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis ... I was going to use black bars to block out negative words that make the President’s image look bad.
Here’s some image examples, but I’ll explore this next week!
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Notes From November 24 Critique
— https://archive.org/ is a good place for old-school/creepy photos and videos
— Paul Virilio is a good example to look into with regards to my topic
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Attempting to Finally Just Start on a Dang Spread
I told myself that I might as well get started on a spread instead of wallowing over not having an idea of everything I might do for every page ... I began developing Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”, since HAL’s and Dave’s dialogue is one of my favorite quotes from my last post/very popular in pop culture. In this dialogue, HAL tells Dave that he is incapable of controlling a mission because he is incapacitated. Dave tells HAL that he is okay, and if HAL doesn’t give him control, he will shut HAL down. HAL disobeys Dave, telling him that he is incapable of going through with the mission and that he is worthless without HAL. As a result, Dave shuts down HAL, and HAL cries over how Dave is destroying him/her life (does HAL have a gender?).
I began just scattering HAL’s speech on the left, and Dave’s on the right, as they slowly migrate across from each other in a dialogue. I didn’t like the way I organized this at the start. I even tried to add an obscure background image to add some mystery. I faded and blurred some of the monoscape to give an old-computer effect. I did not like it at all.
I closed that previous file and began from scratch. I looked into graphic design examples of dialogue and how humans communicate with AI. I went further into the monospace feature and began to add lines of code, where Dave is bold, and Hal is light. I added more of the text that was in the book (which is missing in this section, but still pertains to the idea behind the dialogue). I added more glitch near the end to really give the effect of HAL’s life being destroyed/shut down.
I decided that having just unicode and random computer generated text was too flat. I kicked it up a notch by adding visual glitching effects (warping, messing with image channels, static lines). I’m liking this a lot more compared to my original concept... and it still communicated that it relates to technology or an AI presence being destroyed.
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Attempting To Collect Quotes/Content for My Term Project
It’s been really hard staying on track with book design without class critiques ☹️... But thank goodness that’s over with. As the title says, I’ve attempted to collect some quotes from the books I was interested in showing in my Term Project. I’ll probably update this later if/when I get excerpts from news articles, as I had planned to do. I had a lot of trouble getting page numbers or getting a hold of some ebooks or physical books to refer to... so I’ll have to cite the book itself and figure out how to get my hands on page numbers (If I can at all...).
I also had trouble figuring out a name/title for the theme sections... I will cross out the ones that I am not leaning towards (if there is a selection).
Escapism - “Fahrenheit 451″ by Ray Bradbury
"The small crystal bottle of sleeping tablets which earlier today had been filled with thirty capsules and which now lay uncapped and empty in the light of the tiny flare" (p.14)
“Will you turn the parlour off?” He asked. “That’s my family.” (49)
“My ‘family’ is people. They tell me things: I taught, they laugh! And the colours!” (73)
“Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me, I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.”
Fascism/Control/Authority - “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis
“He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.”
“The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his "ideas" almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store. Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill.”
“He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. He believed in the desirability and therefore the sanctity of thick buckwheat cakes with adulterated maple syrup, in rubber trays for the ice cubes in his electric refrigerator, in the especial nobility of dogs, all dogs, in the oracles of S. Parkes Cadman, in being chummy with all waitresses at all junction lunch rooms, and in Henry Ford (when he became President, he exulted, maybe he could get Mr. Ford to come to supper at the White House), and the superiority of anyone who possessed a million dollars. He regarded spats, walking sticks, caviar, titles, tea-drinking, poetry not daily syndicated in newspapers and all foreigners, possibly excepting the British, as degenerate.”
When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
He was afraid that the world struggle today was not of Communism against Fascism, but of tolerance against the bigotry that was preached equally by Communism and Fascism. But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word “Fascism” and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty. For they were thieves not only of wages but of honor. To their purpose they could quote not only Scripture but Jefferson.
Surveillance - “Nineteen-Eighty Four” by George Orwell
In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. (1.1.4)
It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called. (1.5.65)
He took his scribbling pad on his knee and pushed back his chair so as to get as far away from the telescreen as possible. To keep your face expressionless was not difficult, and even your breathing could be controlled, with an effort: but you could not control the beating of your heart, and the telescreen was quite delicate enough to pick it up. (1.7.22)
Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. (1.1.6)
Superintelligence - “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke
Hal: I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
"I want to do this myself, Hal," he said. "Please give me control."
"Look, Dave, you've got a lot of things to do. I suggest you leave this to me."
"Hal, switch to manual hibernation control."
"I can tell from your voice harmonics, Dave, that you're badly upset. Why don't you take a stress pill and get some rest?"
"Hal, I am in command of this ship. I order you to release the manual hibernation control."
"I'm sorry, Dave, but in accordance with special subroutine C1435-dash-4, quote, When the crew are dead or incapacitated, the onboard computer must assume control, unquote. I must, therefore, overrule your authority, since you are not in any condition to exercise it intelligently."
"Hal," said Bowman, now speaking with an icy calm. "I am not incapacitated. Unless you obey my instructions, I shall be forced to disconnect you."
"I know you have had that on your mind for some time now, Dave, but that would be a terrible mistake. I am so much more capable than you are of supervising the ship, and I have such enthusiasm for the mission and confidence in its success."
"Listen to me very carefully, Hal. Unless you release the hibernation control immediately and follow every order I give from now on, I'll go to Central and carry out a complete disconnection."
Hal's surrender was as total as it was unexpected.
The tools they had been programmed to use were simple enough, yet they could change this world and make the man-apes its masters. (4.1)
They both knew, of course, that Hal was hearing every word, but they could not help these polite circumlocutions. Hal was their colleague, and they did not wish to embarrass him. (23.27)
It was beyond all reason that Hal, who had performed flawlessly for so long, should suddenly turn assassin. (26.12)
Modernization/Automation/Superhuman - “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley
"That's because we don't allow them to be like that. We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium. We don't permit their magnesium-calcium ratio to fall below what it was at thirty. We give them transfusion of young blood. We keep their metabolism permanently stimulated. So, of course, they don't look like that. Partly," he added, "because most of them die long before they reach this old creature's age. Youth almost unimpaired till sixty, and then, crack! the end." (7.22)
No, we can't rejuvenate. But I'm very glad," Dr. Shaw had concluded, "to have had this opportunity to see an example of senility in a human being. Thank you so much for calling me in." He shook Bernard warmly by the hand. (11.13)
"For of course," said Mr. Foster, "in the vast majority of cases, fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelve hundred–that would really be quite sufficient for our purposes. But we want to have a good choice. And of course one must always have an enormous margin of safety. So we allow as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos to develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex-hormone every twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result: they're decanted as freemartins–structurally quite normal (except," he had to admit, "that they do have the slightest tendency to grow beards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last," continued Mr. Foster, "out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention."
He rubbed his hands. For of course, they didn't content themselves with merely hatching out embryos: any cow could do that.
"We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future ..." He was going to say "future World controllers," but correcting himself, said "future Directors of Hatcheries," instead.
The D.H.C. acknowledged the compliment with a smile.
"‘You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity; independence won’t take you safely to the end.’ Well, we’ve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God."
"What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder."
"It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled."
Cyberspace - “Neuromancer” by William Gibson
A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void... The Sprawl was a long strange way home over the Pacific now, and he was no console man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin [1] hotel, his hands clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched [2] between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.
`Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...'
"So what's the score? How are things different? You running the world now? You God?" "Things aren't different. Things are things." (24.30-31)
Degradation/ Deterioration - “The Sheep Look Up” by John Brunner
“Take it for granted that the government will disregard long-term dangers-such as those affecting the environment-in order to cling to power; that the citizenry will do the same because thinking is too much like hard work; and then the handful of Cassandras are proved right, they will be held to blame and very likely stoned or shot.”
“What hurt him most of all, made him feel like a sick child aware of terrible wrongness and yet incapable of explaining it to anyone who might help, was that in spite of the evidence around them, in spite of what their eyes and ears reported-and sometimes their flesh, from bruises, stab wounds, racking coughs, weeping sores-these people believed their way of life was the best in the world, and were prepared to export it at the point of a gun.”
“The killers are the people who are ruining the world to line their pockets, poisoning us, burying us under garbage!”
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Dystopia Tracker
While researching categories for my book, I found this insanely informative website which tracks every single fictional dystopian ideology and the date that it happens in real life.
The detail of this site is astonishing.
My favourite part of it is that it records all the books and their authors who have predicted the ideology, this is super helpful for my project, and just an extremely cool piece to browse 👀
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Experimental Book Process
I was having a conversation with a friend about a thread of images, where I collected all the weirdest Ontario license plates I’ve seen/been sent to me by others. Following this, I proceeded to talk about how I don’t have any ideas for this experimental book exercise. She suggested I do something with all the images I gathered. And so, I do that.
These are only just some of the weird plates I’ve found... but for the sake of this exercise, I’ve eliminated a few. I began by looking into how I can combine these into a book. I decided between making a miniature book, or a miniature accordion, mostly because you don’t need a huge full spread to look at blurry images taken from many different phones... the small pages would suffice.
While I was making a tiny accordion, I realized that if I glued the back two pages with basic Elmer’s all-purpose glue, I can pile it up to make a cohesive book. This solves my worry of having to possibly stitch something small.
A lot of trial and error later for the accordion-miniature-book and its dust jacket, I came to a result that worked and I liked.
My only issue is that the choice of paper I used was slowly tearing in the process of me trying to tuck in my pages. I decided to simply just glue down the “hidden parts”
And so, my miniature book was born, standing at about 2.1x1.5″ 😊
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Inspiration for Term Project Interiors
With the page format I determined in my last post, I looked into visual ways I can demonstrate dystopia.
I previously talked about how a pop of colour like red can really bring out the idea of dystopia.
Another example from the same book demonstrating more examples of a hyper-controlled reality (right side of image) and wreckage (left side) of dystopia.
From the same book as above, but the use of gradients is a lot more subtle. The blocking of text helps to focus on main points in excerpts and creates this unsettling visual pattern.
This is another instance of the unsettling visual pattern I was referring to earlier. Reminds me of TV static or something digitally manipulated.
Red is also used here, but the sense of distress and havoc is also communicated very well here.
The large, bold numbers and words are also very interesting. It’s like trying to get an idea in-your-face to overwhelm you, with minimal image support. It’s a very powerful and loud way of using typography.
I apologize for the blurry image, the original poster didn’t have a HQ photo. This idea was slightly demonstrated in the previous image, but the way the text is falling off the page reminds me of someone having a lot to say, or even a sense of impending information... it’s a stressful feeling to not have the text all nicely tucked into margins.
These examples show distortion through the flipping, turning and misalignment of images and text. Infomation is in total havoc. All of these can justify dystopia.
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How Will I Organize This Madness? — A First Attempt
When I first started planning out this book, I wanted to create a spread for every dystopian theme/ideology (for example, Escapism, Surveillance, etc.). I felt like I was overloading these spreads with way too much information.
I initially planned to have two perspectives:
1. The first page was dedicated to the “old time” perspective of the theme, which will includes excerpts from dystopian fiction and possibly some artistic interpretations
2. The second page was dedicated to the “current” perspective/reality of the theme, which will include modern-day photography on this idea and excerpts from news articles to explain what it is, promises for a brighter future, etc.
As of right now, I believe this is way too much to fit in a spread, and I could possibly create 2 spreads: Each is dedicated to the past and present.
Also, instead of writing paragraphs myself that explain the theme, I think the book excerpts and news articles will speak for themselves and give some room for the reader to interpret it however so they please.
I know for a fact though that I want to add some sort of introduction or epigraph to give the reader a context for mood and this entire book’s purpose.
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Inspiration for Term Book Format
Over the past few days, I was looking into how I can show that my book (externally) is about dystopia and all the terrifying connotations that come with it. I have been looking into different types of materials and methods of binding. I really want to give my book a creepy-destructive-yet-fragile vibe so it feels like something that has gone through a lot, just like the history of dystopian genre.
I really like the paper mache feel of this book and how it looks like it has seen a lot. It’s also giving the mood of destruction and fragility from the way it’s roughly put together. It’s raw and honest.
The exterior of this also intrigues me and gives me the same vibe of “rawness” through its texture, but the way the paper is scrunched up gives me the feeling of tension and unrest, which could be associated with dystopia.
This is a lot more simplistic in comparison to the other 2 examples I found, but I love the way this gives a documentary feeling; it’s as if someone was to write down all of the terrible things that were predicted in the part and is writing down how badly it’s affected us today. It feels personal, like a diary.
Something about this book makes it super creepy... it could probably be the clean jet black cover with absolutely no context on the front, with an extremely vague suggestion of what the book could be about on the side with the “yes” and “no”. It’s a lot more simple than the previous example, but I just wanted to keep this recorded because it still gives me the feeling of unease.
This is less of a completely bound book and more of a “package” that you open up and go through all of the information (I think the pages in these images are bound together in its own separate book? Not completely sure...). What I do like about this is the “element of surprise” ... you open up this clean “packaged” book, and the inside is super noisy and loud; it’s like opening up to this reality of how we are transitioning into this unrestful dystopia.
We are slowly transitioning into colour territory. Red is such a bold colour that connotes so many different emotions. When I looked at this example, it gave me the feeling of urgency and fear. I noticed that a lot of the previous works I’m picking out are achromatic. If I did decide on colour, I would have to choose a successful palette, such as this.
Wow, more colour! I do love the simple stitching of these images. The red is such a pop against all the neutral colours. The presence on the spine of both these images are beautiful too. I do love how “rough” it seems, especially against some of the flaws you can see, like the peaks of black on the first image, and the typography on the second.
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What Are My Next Steps For The Term Project?
- I need to create a mood board to further understand what kind of tone I will be approaching
- How will I organize my content?
- What way will I organize my material?
- What kind of photography or textual content (Poetry? Excerpts from dystopian fiction?) do I need to start collecting?
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