Evaluation
The final major project. At the beginning of the project I wanted to create an editorial piece, something like a coffee table book, that would focus on three different mediums; fashion, product design and typography. This was inspired by architect and fashion designer, Virgil Abloh’s IKEA collaboration that I featured in my dissertation ‘The Unique Development of Virgil Abloh’s Brand Identity Through Contemporary Culture, Early Influences and Collaboration.’ However this idea never came to fruition as I didn’t really have a solid basis to go off of, plus I also wanted to show off more of an illustrative piece since that aspect of my identity has developed over the years at AUB and with this being my final project I felt like I should do something I was experienced with so that the design would be the best it can be.
Coming out of the first tutorial with a few ideas, I set out to research something that I could create some illustrative content for whilst still keeping with the editorial idea that I had prior. Since my illustration style is based around sarcasm and humour, I wanted to find a semi-serious topic that I could either mock or present in a new light.
My first instinct was to use something I like to call ‘honest truths.’ Honest truths are basically everyday criticisms that people want to ignore, for example; money want make you happy or time is the real currency, but I ended up hating the research I found for this and thought this topic is kind of boring to look at. This led me to researching into conspiracy theories because I personally find conspiracy theories fascinating to read no matter how stupid some of them may be, and who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory. Some research that solidified my idea was the ‘Parcast Podcast’ hosted by Molly Brandenburg & Carter Roy, as they have two episodes on a lot of different conspiracy theories from Area 51 to Princess Diana’s death, with the two narrators stating fact from fiction and laying out each theory in its rawest form. Whilst listening to a few of these podcasts I drew up a few characters / designs that related to said podcast. Not really having anything to go off from there, I decided to do a bit more research into the subject matter.
I had an idea where I would make a series of short books explaining each theory and shows the fact from fiction in the theories. I went to Wikipedia to look at a list of potential theories I could select however this was too broad of an idea to complete in the time frame I had, so I was advised to pick one theory that I liked the most and focus on that one. This led to me choosing the flat Earth theory as the basis of my project.
The flat Earth theory, a theory that suggests that the Earth is a flat plane with ice walls surrounding the exterior. When researching into flat Earth, and why so many people believe in it, I thought that it was such an outrageous theory that an illustrated, editorial piece would suit the theory the best, being able to exaggerate my drawings in a sarcastic yet humours way. My initial idea for this project, including the flat Earth theory, was based off of this quote by Joseph Uscinski “If you can get people to ironically question systems like NASA... and the scientific process in general, you can... get them to question those things for real” meaning I wanted to create something that people would read then question said theory and maybe getting people to believe in such a questionable theory. However, my idea developed into more of a project about open-mindfulness and getting my target audience to be more accepting of other people ideas no matter how dumb it may seem. From there I started creating collages of different ‘scenes’ that would instigate and inspire further ideas. I used multiple different magazines to create these collages. This wasn’t as successful as I had hoped, but down the line in the project the pancake collage became an inspiration for an illustration. I did some more research into the theory, stumbling upon a “rap battle” between American rapper B.o.B and Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, with B.o.B being for the flat Earth theory and Tyson being against the theory, proving B.o.B wrong. This inspired some small experimental pieces that developed into the future design that I finished on, a for and against type editorial piece.
This idea of a for and against type editorial piece was a strong enough idea for me to start creating layouts with different mediums. I started off with creating a Marianna Mooney inspired, typographic design which I thought was really effective yet lacked motivation and content, so it looked good but wasn’t exactly what I wanted. This is when I started questioning if I even wanted to do flat Earth theory as I felt like there wasn’t much to use that would fill an entire book. I also wasn’t referring back to my Learning Agreement that outlined what I was doing, which in hindsight was a bad thing to do. I was listening to the flat Earth ‘Parcast’ podcast and they kept referring back to this idea that NASA ‘lies’ about the research they do, which is one of the main reasonings that flat-Earthers use to defend their statements. This gave me an idea, that was way off topic, to create a for and against editorial design relating to the idea of NASA lying, this included flat Earth and the 1969 Moon Landings in which many people, to this day, believe was a hoax. I was advised in a tutorial, even though the experiment I created for this idea was well received, to stick with the flat Earth side.
To briefly summaries (otherwise this evaluation will go on for way too long), coming out of this tutorial I re-evaluated what I was doing, looked back at my edited learning agreement, and decided to challenge myself and continue with the flat Earth theory, to an eventual successful design that you see as the final piece. Obviously, I created a lot of experiments between the last tutorial and the final piece (evident in the process book), with one main struggle being that the editorial design was difficult to layout because the way I wanted people to read both books was that they are read at the same time, which meant I had to match up both sides. So, with this and the fact that the research I did didn’t exactly match it was a challenge to create. This was until I realised, I could do a ‘Z’ shaped book, which is what my final piece would look like if the Coronavirus wasn’t present. This is shown, however, in an example I created with the materials I had at hand.
If I had to describe the two different sides to the book I would say the scientific side or to use its proper title, ‘A Compendium to our Spherical Earth’, is an academic textbook inspired design with a minimalistic layout approach, presenting the reader with the facts about how the Earth is spherical and the history of this. On the other hand, the flat Earth side or ‘the truth’, is the complete opposite, it has a humorous approach mixed with repetition to represent the way flat-Earthers repeat their argument when others try to prove them wrong. The other aspect that ‘the truth’ side has is the lack of editorial rules which pays homage to flat-Earthers completely disregarding any scientific values and/or evidence. Another way you could summaries this project is the book gets the audience to think; ‘do I want to read the truth but it looks really long and boring to read, or do I read the dumb theory but it’s fun to read and more visually appealing’, relating back to that idea of being open-minded in a non-serious sense.
Overall, I am really pleased with my final outcome to the final major project, it’s just a shame that I may not get the chance to fully create this design due to the Coronavirus. If I were to ever revisit or do this project again I think I would experiment with an animation, even though I keep saying I never want to do an animation, looking back at previous ones I’ve created I actually really appreciate the time and effort put into them. I think I would also play around with the idea of conspiracy theories as a whole, for example creating an animation/editorial piece that would instruct someone on how to create their own conspiracy in a comedic way, obviously.