Thesis Proposal

Phase 1: Background

Phase 2: Research

Phase 3: Design

Phase 4: Production

Outcome

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The following work was produced

between the months of September to

December 2011 as my first thesis outcome

for my Communication Design Bachelor

at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

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My thesis proposal was

presented in September

2011 at the start of the

semester. It outlined my

inspiration sources,

objectives and deliverables.

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In developing the thesis for my project, I was inspired by Mark Valli’s words about the future of bookselling:

Our only chance of staying in business as booksellers and book publishers is to provide not just information, but meaning, extra meaning, striving to turn every book into a special and unique event, a landmark, a decisive statement of intent, the materialization of an idea, or a set of ideas, or a feeling. In the book business today, focus should be on quality, not on quantity. —eleph a nt, Issue 7, “Rendezvous With The Void.”

In collaboration with my client, Jesus Ambriz, I will be designing and producing a printed book of his novel, My Unborn Daughter: A Discourse on the Brevity of Awakening. The novel oversees the development of a young couple, Richard Philbrick and Kathya Rosenberg, and can be best described as a philosophical romance. Trying to create a new way in which love is portrayed, My Unborn Daughter is a novel with abound-ing experiences and questions. It follows Richard’s coming-of-age story, using thoughtful narrative that varies between first to third person, internal musings, letters, dreams, and other voice changes. From a graphic perspective, I see the potential to visualize the novel with innovative imagery and typography, in what the literary world has dubbed as “hybrid novel.” In undertaking a project of this kind, I will explore the challenges and limitations of working with a literary work of great lenght to produce a valuable piece of print communica-tion design, which will also strive to redefine what a hybrid novel is.

My goal is to create a deeper understanding and a richer experience in the reading of fiction novels, enhancing new methods of innovation in the print medium and re-imagining its potential. Through the aes-thetic and conceptual design of this novel, I intend to create an open dialogue and encourage further interest in treasuring the printed book as a medium of its own interactivity, in which the public will value its significance in our increasingly digital world.

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Fig.1 Alberto Hernández’s work,

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll

and Mr. Hyde

Fig.2 Work from Visual Editions

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What is a hybrid novel?

[Hybrid novels] integrate graphic devices with written texts, to describe and comment on a visually rich society. In doing so they re-define and expand the way in which a novel can communicate. (s a d ok i er sk i, ph d r e se a rch)

A hybrid novel consists of any work of literary fiction that uses visual experimentation, be it in the form of typography, photography or illus-tration, to enhance its written narrative, and consequently the reader’s experience. It is exclusive to novels, not including graphic novels, bi-ographies and children’s books. Most importantly, the graphic devices “must be integral [and] intrinsic to the primary text” (s a d ok i er sk i, 27). Most people don’t know a hybrid novel until they read one, and in my case, I took some time to observe literary works of this kind in order to make my own assertions about the genre of hybrid novels: what has been done, and what could be done, in relation to the production of my own hybrid text.

Hybrid novels have been around a long time—in the 16th century, Lope de Vega Carpio wrote a series of five novels that omitted the letter e. In similar fashion, authors like Lawrence Sterne and James Joyce pub-lished works using asterisks, blank pages, lines that go off the margins of a page and even scrambled text, to convey emotion and interaction in a written text. In more modern times, authors like Jonathan Safran Foer and Dave Eggers have pushed the limits of fiction by embed-ding photographs into their storytelling, acting as second elements in a page. Although the making of hybrid novels isn’t new, as research shows, the fact that such little attention has been given to these works in the field of Communication Design was of concern and interest to me. I found that there is potential for this kind of market, but clearly, there is a divide between the writers embarking in this kind of story-telling and the designers willing to undertake a task that goes beyond designing the end product.

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Thesis & Research questions

For this task, I have turned to my long-time friend and writer, Jesus Ambriz. Together, we first discussed the potential of working collabor-atively in what will be his debut as a writer and my thesis as a designer, through the production of his novel, My Unborn Daughter. Ambriz wrote his novel as a self-directed, personal project, in an attempt to record his memory and start his career as a writer.

My research question that I have posed for myself is how explore the visual potential of this narrative to create an intimate and metaphoric setting for the reader. As mentioned in my introduction, I have found there is a noticeable gap and unsatisfactory collaboration between hybrid novelists and graphic designers. Most of the time, writers acting as graphic artists (where they art-direct the graphic elements on their own) result in hybrid novels receiving more of a negative feedback than a positive one. In this case, hybrid novels have been challenged and criticized by experts and readers alike as including unnecessary elements that thwart the reading experience instead of enhancing it, often using adjectives like “gimmicky” and “preten-tious.” I believe, however, that the territory of hybrid novels is rich in its potential and should be explored by allowing designers to collabo-rate with writers from early on in the process of edition: by becoming part of the construction of the narrative, designers could become co-editors in the conceptual as well as the visual aspects of a hybrid novel. By emphasizing this kind of unique collaboration between my client and I, I will set myself as an example of the benefits of working from the inside-out in editorial and book design. My Unborn Daughter will be the product of such collaboration, a book that will function both aesthetically and conceptually to serve as a better example of the future hybrid novel. Consequently I am interested in finding how hybrid novels differ from traditional fiction and their improved and appealing analogies to literary expression.

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Fig.3

OnTheTable’s

inspiration

catalogue for

Semi-Couture

What I wanted this book to be:· A refreshing take on fiction design· A visually engaging book highlighting good craftsmanship· A narrative complemented by visual and tangible interaction

What I did not want this book to be: · A picture book· Visual elements with no real use or impact · A replica of every other hybrid novel in the market

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1-2 He attempted suicide when he was fifteen. He was depressed and anguished at life for the loss of his parents when he was only eight. He goes through a dark phase in his life before trying to come through.

A 17-YE A R- O LD YO U N G M A N N A M ED R I CH A R D, L IV IN GIN TH E F I C T I O N A L CO U NTRYO F C A S SWAY, YE A R 2013

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At seventeen, he is longing to find his passion in life and become a writer. He meets Kathya, a16-year-old sweet but insecure young woman. She has high hopes about the future, but is secretive about her romantic life.

Kathya’s abusive boyfriend, Jason, puts a strain in her relationship with Richard, until he attacks Kathya in a fit of rage. Eventually, Richard finds out about his lies and deception.

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Kathya dreams of a little girl named Elizabeth. She shows her a dead black dove. Miraculously, Kathya brings it back to life. Richard has the same dream during the night. Elizabeth is then revealed to be their future daughter, a promise of a better world.

Kathya acquires the ability to visualize utopia and create visions out of everyday life. She shows Richard the connections between reality and the world of revelation. The black dove appears as symbol of unity.

Richard graduates from high school. He and Kathya learn to see beyond the realm of the imaginable, and consummate their love.

16Fig.4 Spreads from

You Shall Know Our Velocity

Fig.5 Steven Hall’s

The Raw Shark Texts

Fig.6 Spreads from

Extremely Loud and

Incredibly Close

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Previous academic study of hybrid novels

The starting point in my research was Zoë Sadokierski’s PhD thesis, Visual Writing: a critique of graphic devices in hybrid novels, from a Visual Communication Design perspective. In her study, Sadokierski compiled a list of works of fiction that fall into the category of hybrid novels, and questioned their nature both as narrative tools and their graphic design potential. Additionally, she made an in-depth study of three particular works: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Dave Eggers’ You Shall Know Our Velocity and Stephen Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts.

In this detailed study, Sadokierski’s personal notes on her distaste of some graphic elements, particularly in Dave Eggers’ work, provided a deeper opportunity for my analysis of hybrid texts. For example, some pages in an earlier edition of You Shall Know Our Velocity featured images embedded directly into the grid—a logotype and the drawing of a tree. Sadokierski found the treatment of these graphics “stylistical-ly inconsistent with any of the other graphic devices in the novel, and appears to serve no literary purpose” (s a d ok i er sk i 173).

I referred back to this observation in my reading process of other hybrid novels I encountered at the library. One of them was The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, a novel that inserts images within paragraph breaks and, more noticeably, black rectangles that cover the height of the page to symbolize one of the characters’ lack of thought.Although these devices are interesting and spark curiosity at first glance, as a de-signer I asked myself a more important question: is this use of graphics enhancing the storytelling experience, or diminishing it? Do hybrid novels like these, with their literal use of illustrative elements, encour-age the reader’s imagination, or are they interfering with what could otherwise be a unique interaction between reader and narrative?

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Not without inspiration, I searched the web for designers contributing work to the field of hybrid novels. I found Spain-based designer Alberto Hernández and his studio, The Publishing Lab. In 2008, Hernández produced his own hybrid book using the novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for his master thesis at the London College of Communication, along with his thesis project Hybrid Novels: a new way of reading narrative fiction. Hernandez’s rendition of the experimental and often difficult to read novel by R. L. Stevenson is a beautiful example of the use of metaphor in design: using various printing techniques throughout the publication (cutting up pages with an x-acto knife, a flip-book of portraits, pages that fold and disappear in intricate ways around the spine) Hernández achieved the kind of hybrid novel that all works of its genre aspire to achieve. His work accentuates interactivity through the tactile as well as intellectual experience of the reader, and empha-sizes the potential of printed material in ways more than one. His thesis question posed the same challenge I undertook: “by intervening in the narrative of a chosen novel through visual and verbal techniques and devices, how could I retell the story so that readers get involved in new ways and understand the narrative more easily? How could I enhance the experience of reading?” (h er na n de z , h y br id nov el s).

It was also interesting to find that Stevenson’s novel has been re-inter-preted visually not only by Hernández but other design studios as well, such as Jung & Wenig’s book, a firm based in Germany. This kind of examples led my research into finding out more about how graphic de-signers have been re-interpreting classic literature and translating these stories for a different demographic. Alice in Wonderland’s design by Laura Deniau is another example of a classic novel re-imagined to tell a differ-ent story and have a different effect in the reader.

Market & Media Research

In order to understand how My Unborn Daughter would translate into a hybrid text, I had to retrace my steps back to figuring out with my client who his intended audience was. This led me to choose some novels for market reference that resembled My Unborn Daughter’s ideas and sen-

19Fig.7 Jung und Wenig’s

re-interpretation of

The Strange Case of

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

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Fig.8 Related titles to

My Unborn Daughter:

romance, science fiction

& a coming-of-age

graphic novel

Fig.9 Scans of Print

magazine’s article,

Acrobat Reader

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timents, such as Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and the classic by Charles Dickens, Great Expectations. Ambriz wanted to emphasize that his novel, although centered on adolescents, could not necessarily appeal to an audience that young, being that the narrative often went in tangents and mono-logues, making it difficult to follow. Although the story in itself has proven to be otherwise straight-forward, through this analysis I began to imagine more ways than one to convey the emotional qualities of the text.

In my market research I also studied the opinion of experts on the subject, such as design writer Rick Poynor’s article in Eye Magazine, “Evolutionary Tales.” He makes an excellent point in explaining a writ-er’s apparent reluctance into creating more books of our kind.

There were good reasons to hope that the new digital tools [...] might inspire a new school of writers. So far it hasn’t happened in print – for three basic reasons. First, because most writers have no desire to give up any aspect of their autonomy and no interest in extending the designer’s role. Second, because most designers don’t possess the degree of writing talent or commitment that ambitious writing requires […] Third, because without works produced in suffi-cient number to establish their place in the bookshops and reviews pages, there can be no viable market for books of this kind.

It became more evident that there is still a lot of potential to create a bridge between the collaboration of writers and designers in the production of visual texts. This gave me a new anchor in terms of my research objectives: by collaborating with a writer from early on in the edition process, we would both explore cross-disciplinary territory in working together producing a new kind of hybrid book.

A successful collaboration of this example is seen in Jonathan Safran Foer’s production of his book, Tree of Codes. The book is an originally intricate example of another reapropiation of classic literature: every page in the book was die-cut, isolating and separating words so that the reading experience becomes an experiment and a challenge. Safran Foer produced this book thanks to Visual Editions, a small book pub-lishing company in London, UK. VE has been successfully making hybrid books, helping create a market of their own: “We wondered why

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there is such a large divide between text-driven literary books on the one hand and picture-driven art and design books on the other. And we won-dered why this divide seems so extreme.” (v isua l-edi t ions.com)

Survey Research

In addition to my tertiary research, I wished to gain insight of the general consensus on what readers think of hybrid novels. I conducted a survey that was answered by 35 people, both designers and literature readers, open to anyone with interest in literature and disregarding if they were familiar with hybrid novels or not. I included interactive visual questions in which the user analyzed two sets of images from different hybrid novels, and then chose the one that was most ap-pealing and visually interesting to them, using comparisons between typographic, photographic and illustrative treatments.

The results collected in this survey expressed a desire to see unex-pected elements in literature, without overestimating the amount of imagery in the narrative: readers want to be able to fill in the gaps by themselves, and not be told what to interpret or how to read. Every person who answered also made clear the fact that they mostly liked the example images of hybrid novels, and wondered why they don’t have as many exposure to them as they should. Most answers also specified that depending on the nature of the story itself they would be more or less accepting of graphic treatments.

Some of the questions asked were:

· Have you ever heard or read about hybrid novels/visual literature ( fiction works that use graphic elements, like photography or illustration)?

· What would irritate you the most about a novel that had graphic elements through the narrative?

· Would you be interested in seeing more books of this kind that play with graphic elements? Why or why not?

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Fig.10 Close-ups of Tree of

Codes; production of the

book at Visual Editions

Fig.11 Survey participants

were asked to study each

spread in comparison to

the other, in terms of image

and text treatments

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ReaderDesigner

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1. Gender?• Female

• Male

2. Have you ever heard about

hybrid novels?• Yes• No

3. What would irritate you the

most about a novel that had graphic

elements in the narrative?

• A book with too many

photographs• Having

drawings of the characters• Experimental

text treatments• Other

Some responses:

Reader: Illustration is one of the most important things in a book for me. Helps to have an idea of the context even before reading the description. I am a very visual person, so I like a nice illustration design/photography, etc.

Designer: I wouldn’t want the images to be so literal that they were simply translating the written word into a visual. I want the images to be provide a unique and somewhat ambiguous impression. Creating mood, feeling, and pacing. The text with the visuals should be distinctly different from the text on its own.

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After looking at these images (which belong to hybrid novels available at any bookstore) would you be interested in seeing more books of this kind that play with graphic elements? Why or why not?

Reader: Yes, because they make me think more about how a story is put together, and why it is giving a certain frame to the pictures and text, as if there’s a message hidden in the arrangement itself. As if somehow the pictures and the interplay with the words becomes a part of the story itself, unspoken information that’s a secret to the character, the author and revealed slowly to the reader.

Designer: The design should be transparent so I am able to focus on the content. I don’t want to be distracted. Are visuals going to make the book easier to understand? Are these books just meant to “look pretty” or are they improving the story in some way?

Reader: Yes. Because there are so many ways of accessing literature: ebooks, ipads, online, etc. A printed book can and should have more elements to it. Otherwise, why not just read something on a screen?

Designer: I wouldn’t mind; I like it when form can enhance the content to improve the reading. Traditionalists/critics may find it less legitimate than reading a full-text book though. (eg. like how the judging panel of Canada Reads 2011 voted of Essex County first basically on the grounds that it wasn’t a “real” novel.) Hybrid novels probably cater more towards this generation too since we’ve lived/grown up in a post-modernist age.

28Fig.12 Initial breakdown of the

novel in “phases”, based on the

basic stages of a story: beginning,

introduction of conflict, climax and

resolution. Each color represents

a chapter and its lenght

PHASE 1

PHASE 2

PHASE 3

PHASE 4

stag e on e – Prologue, chapters 1, 2: Introduction stag e t wo – Chapters 3, 4: Setup of conflict stag e t h r ee – Chapters 5, 6, 7: Climax stag e fou r – Chapter 8, Epilogue: Resolution

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The Designer’s Authorship

Through conversation and my personal involvement with the edition and translation process (the novel was originally written in Spanish) Ambriz asked me to push the narrative in its graphic representation: how does the use of graphic metaphors aid in the interpretation of a novel based so much on emotional reception? It was in this ongoing exchange of ideas and opinions that I begun to acknowledge my in-volvement in the process of producing this hybrid novel not only as a designer, but also as a producer, as Ellen Lupton aptly described in her essay “The Designer as Producer”:

[Walter Benjamin] claimed that to bridge the divide between author and publisher, author and reader, poet and popularizer, is a revolutionary act, because it challenges the professional and economic categories upon which the institutions of ‘literature’ and ‘art’ are erected. […] For the designer to become a producer, she must have the skills to begin directing content, by critically navigating the social, aesthetic, and technological systems across which commu-nications flow. (lu p ton)

The construction of the novel itself, from an early interpretation of the narrative, has allowed me to enrich my graphic interpretation of it. In this stage of research, I chose to analyze the novel and its dis-tinctive moods in its narrative to divide it into four “phases” of visual treatments, which reflect each section’s ideologies and reflections. The dissemination of the narrative into these declared phases was the driving point of my visual research and recollection of imagery that has aided me in imagining stylistic outcomes, based on aesthetic choices as well as conceptual one.

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My sketches started out as

visualizations of what spreads

could look like, based on image

placement, textual hierarchy

and scale of typographic and

illustrative elements

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35I used these images to create a

mood board of inspiration for the

overall book. I wanted to visualize

a change in mood & visual language:

going from a minimal, monochromatic

look, into more illustrative, subtly

colored spreads. The climax of the novel

is introduced with bright red and pink

tonalities and different typographic

voices differentiated from the rest

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Prologue- Introduction to Merkabah / CasswayC1- Do you remember? (French fold)C2- “Memoria Vetusta” intro: suicide attemptC2- Ashley & Leonard’s death (memory)C2- Richard’s letterC2/C3- Transition: From Dark to Light

C3- Insert of child Richard’s letterC3- Insert of Ashley & Leonard’s photo albumC3/C4- Transition: Introduction to Kathya (imagery)C4- Insert of Kathya’s diaryC4- Insert of “Katya” name bookC4- Richard spies on Jason (theatrical script, insert)C4- Insert of Richard’s note to KathyaC5- Hourly progress in chapter (make distinct)C5- Insert of University informationC5- Kathya’s story (different treatment/imagery)C5- Insert of Richard’s letter to Kathya

C6- Transition: Dream phase, color, love C6- Dream #1 (imagery)C6- Insert of Elizabeth’s meaning in name bookC6- Dream #2 (imagery)C7- Insert of Kathya’s drawingsC7- Graduation ceremony speech*C7- Transition: “Animae Partus”C8- Transition: Intro to “Commemoration” C8- Insert of Richard’s poem to ElizabethC8- Valedictorian speechC8- Piano scene (french fold)C8- “The dance of Eternity” (imagery)C8- Elizabeth’s words through the mirror (imagery)

C9- Richard’s last letterEpilogue- Like prologue, different layout/paper

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Initial design phase

After analyzing the novel’s content and diving it into “phases”—a process that was extremely useful not only to make sense of the lenght of the piece, but also to start visualizing different visual languages around them—I made a list of every key moment in the story that had the potential to be treated visually. It was necessary for me to discover these key scenes from early on in the process and start experimenting with what I could do with them; that way, the design process turned out to be not chronological, but based in important “moments” in the story. This list was then used to make an even more focused selection of jumps in the story that were crucial to the understanding of the narrative.

Out of this list, three important shifts in the plot were identified: Chapter 2, when Richard is young and has just attempted suicide, going through a transition of accepting his mistakes and moving on; Chapter 6, when Richard and Kathya start dreaming of Elizabeth, who is later revealed to be their future daughter; and Chapters 7 to 8, when Kathya finds a way to show Richard a different way of appreciating reality. The style of writing and conversations between characters vary immensely from one point to the other, which proved the story grew more mature as it neared its completion, just like the characters in it.

The scenes in red where the key moments I identified in this stage; the ones in soft pink are the scenes leading up to the big transitions. The scenes in grey were attractive, but didn’t have enough conceptual strenght to be very distinct from the others.

After narrowing my ideas down, I decided I wanted to use different image styles for each mood:

· Different display typefaces · Photography · Illustrations · Watercolors / paintings

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Sketching out ideas

for transitions

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W H I T E W A T E R S

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M E M O R I A V E T U S T A

3

A U R O R A B O R E A L I S

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A U R O R A A U S T R A L I S

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These are the first drafts for my chapter titles.Choosing the typography was an important step before I could visualize the rest of the spreads, having at least an initial direction helped me make decisions about type hierarchy later on. The nine titles would also reflect a change in pacing and mood, but would always be anchored at the same position in the page and include the same number treatments (Miso Light) so they could still be unified. The titles were refined for the final design.

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The Merkabah Tribune

THE MERKABAH TRIBUNEAbout the Locations of the Present Work

& of the Moral Situation of the World To Be Read Without Prejudice

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Initial designs of the map

and prologue spread, using

a blackletter old-style

Goudy for the title, later

changed to Brothers for

the final design

The prologue of the novel was very distinct from the rest of the book, written in an almost journalistic style with the only purpose of describing the situation of the world in year 2023 and the fictional country of Merkabah. Observing this, the prologue was my start-ing point of layout design. I created a map of Merkabah and designed the spreads as if they belonged to an article in a newspaper, distinguishing it from the rest of the novel. The map was drawn with pencil on thin white paper; the soft green color is a geometric shape overlayed on top.

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Initial title iterations for

the cover design, with the intention

of having them foil-stamped with

gold foil. I chose to experiment

with several typefaces before almost

reaching a final one (at the bottom).

This direction was not used in the

final version because the aesthetics

of the final design didn’t match

this concept anymore

45Different representations

of Kathya to be used in the

opening spread of “Azure”, the

chapter where she’s introduced.

Kathya is innocent but enigmatic,

and a painter/illustrator

46The black dove is a recurring

symbol in the novel, used as a symbol

of unity and peace. The drawing was

inserted in some pages of the book in

a small scale, signifying key moments

in the story

47 Digital screenshot of the french fold

at the beginning of Chapter 6, when the

dreams begin happening. The gradient is

only seen by half-opening the fold; the

drawings of flying birds go in the crease,

referencing the motif of the dream

OUTSIDE

INSIDE

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Found photography, obtained

from anonymous sources at the

Vancouver Flea Market

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My photos come from anonymous sources, as I got all these collected photos at the Vancouver Flea Market. This direction was adequate for my concept as I wanted to recreate the feeling of nostalgia so present in the story: even though the characters live in a world ahead of our own, Richard only has vague memories of his parents and finds most evi-dence of them through a box of photos in his attic. Likewise, Elizabeth exists only in a dream although she is evidence of Richard and Kathya’s lasting relationship: the photos work as an object of evidence, but when treated differently—obscuring the face of Elizabeth, re-coloring and cropping a photo of water—they change to images of intrigue.

By scanning and color-correcting the photos,

I was able to play with different gradient

effects. The final introductory spread for chapter

one, “White Waters”, is shown above

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Experiments with photography

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Handwritten titles for chapters

3 to 6; on the right, an example

of how handwriting complements

the illustrations

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The use of handwritten titles and messages was im-portant in the first chapters of the book, where Richard and Kathya meet at school. The handwriting refer-ences their respective writing in their diaries, and has a rough, freehand quality to symbolize the kind of world they’re both involved in. In Chapter 4, this handwritting became more evident in the final design when I added small notes written in pencil on the edge of some pages, to indicate small events in the plot, like Kathya writing down her phone number for Richard.

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Bembo SchoolbookKathya opened her eyes and faced the tender reality.

Courier TwelveThe answers to all my questions

will come in due time.

MI S O L IGH T

R I C H A R D , OP E N T HE D O OR . . .

J U S T L E T ME HE L P. . .

Freight Display

No one dares to knock at the door of our concentration.

B R O W N T H I NT H E R E I S N O U LT I M AT E R E A L I T Y.

BODY COPY

JOURNAL WRITING

DISPLAY 1

DISPLAY 2

DISPLAY 3

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The final typeface for body copy was Bembo Schoolbook, a variation of the classical Bembo with alternate characters for the letters a, g and y. The choice was made after many other typeface considerations, including the original Bembo.The Schoolbook variation has a young strangeness to it that looks different in the page, but there is something to say about this oddness that complements the plot: it adds to the context of the character’s being in high school and Richard and Kathya’s oddly revealing dreams.

For the several inserts spread throughout the book I chose Courier Twelve, a monospaced typeface that would resemble the old-school act of writing in a typewriter. This typeface was also used for Richard’s diary entries and Kathya’s story in Chapter 6.

There are several display typefaces for each of the chapter’s intros and alternate treatments in them. Miso was the first choice for the quiet, minimal look of the first chapters, where dramatic spacing and a clean monochromatic palette was emphasized. In the more visual parts of the book, towards chapters 7 and 8, the combination of Freight Display and Brown was used to communicate the elegance of the com-memoration ceremonies and the visions of a utopian world seen by the characters.

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The outside of the

book and pages

showing the french fold

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5

Looking at the inside

spreads in the first

four chapters

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The final book was produced with

a combination of vellum sheets,

different-sized inserts and

bound in black linen cloth. The

title was letterpressed by hand

on rice paper.

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65 Book as show in final presentation

on December 15h, 2011.

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1 · Coupland, Douglas. J-Pod. Toronto: Random House Canada. 2006. Print.

2 · Hernandez, Alberto. “Hybrid Novels: A new way of reading narrative fiction.” 2009. Web. 14.Sept.2011.<http://issuu.com/hereigo/docs/hybridnovels_report?mode=embed&viewMode=presentation&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fdark%2Flayout.xml>

3 · Gerber, Anna. Triggs, Teal. “Acrobat Reader.” Print Magazine. June/July 2006. 68-73. Print.

4 · Jung, Carl Gustav. The Red Book (Liber Novus). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009. Print.

5 · Losowsky, Andrew. Turning Pages: Editorial Design for Print Media. 1. Berlin: Gestalten, 2010. Print.

6 · Lupton, Ellen. “The Designer as Producer.” Typotheque Essays. Web. 10 Oct. 2011. <http://www.typotheque.com/ar-ticles/the_designer_as_producer#>

7 · Plascencia, Salvador. The People of Paper. San Francisco: McSweeney’s Books, 2005. Print.

8 · Sadokierski, Zoe. “So what am I doing again?” PhD Research Blog. 2009. Web. 16 Sep. 2011. <http://www.zoesad-okierski.blogspot.com/>

9 · Sadokierski, Zoe. Visual Writing: A critique of graphic devices in hybrid novels, from a Visual Communication Design perspective. Sydney: University of Technology, Sydney, 2010. Print.

10 · Safran Foer, Jonathan. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. Print.

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11 · Safran Foer, Jonathan. Interview by David Dawkins. “Jonathan Safran Foer’s visual literature.” Dazed Digital. May 2011. Web. 29 Sept 2011. <http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/9478/1/jonathan-safran-foers-visual-literature>

12 · Valli, Mark. “Rendezvous with the void.” Elephant. 2011: 200 - 208. Print.