After my research, brainstorming and ideation I have three strong concepts which contain visual language within each of the ideas, I need to choose one to push forward, my idea can be one from the three presented here, or could be an amalgamation of several of the more successful elements from each concept.
At this point I have clear criteria as to what would make a succesful outcome, this is gathered from both my primary and secondary research of invisivlw ciites itself and from researching and examining previous successful entries to ISTD from previous years. My criteria include:
Must slow down the reading speed in order to allow for reflection of each city
Should use an unconventional format, different from that of a regular book, appropraitley refelcting calvinos wiriting style
Must reflect at least some of the themes present within the book, these include;
Venice
Cycles
Decay
Perception
Deception
Discovery
Approach 1: A letter to the Khan
My first approach uses the books format to it’s advantage, the cities act as indivdual episodes of an anthropology, with little to no connecting factors inbetween cities, given this in combinatinon with the clear conversation happening between chapters amongst Marco Polo and Kublai Khan my first approach leans into this by using a letter format to present individual cities, with one city per page. The visuals of a letter can be echoed throughout the book, with a cover that looks similar to the front of an envelope and a back that could potentially be opened similar to a letter, with wax seal and lifting flap with the content within, allowing the reader to feel more involved and invested with the book, treasuring each city as an indivdual letter, rather than one page within a larger book.
I found myself particularly intersested within body copy manipulation, particularly from my research and deconstruction of KAPOW! and my research into previous ISTD entries, copy manipulation is something that I have not considered in previous projects and needs to be done elegantly and carefully in order to perserve the documents heirachy, but still be interesting and engaging to read. Within my document I have taken a traditionally square paragraph and kept its normal boundaries, but then within the paragraph there are expressive manipulations that reflect the text of which is being manipulated. While this is interesting to look at and the manipulation are quite subtle, at the moment they are simply illustrating the text itself, which may not quite be sophisticated enough to achieve and ISTD, for a first draft this shows a clear idea, but the end execution should be more thought about and use differing point size or use different rotations other than right angles or 45 degrees. I think this would look interesting due to the refined and sharp corners of the outer paragraph and the perfect and carefully constructed serifs of my chosen typeface will contrast with the almost randomly rotated paragraphs, this would allow me to evoke different emotions and wildly change the hierarchy at unexpected points, without being too illustrative in my text composition.
Inspecting futher into the letter format, the actual date of this book is back from the 14th Century, during the mongols reign and Marco Polo himself. An interesting point of research, particularly within this concept is the mongol “Yam” post system
A very important element in the estrablishing of the expansive mongol empire, praised for it’s efficency. This point could be echoed within my format, researching into how this post system worked and then reflecting this within my visual language could make for an appropraite and consistently themed visual language, that has a purpose for it’s look, beyond simply existing to look aesthetically pleasing.
Taking more inspiration from the time period of the Marco Polo, where manuscripts were commonplace, these manuscripts are flush with elegance and gold foil letterforms, ancient dropcaps (petrus lombardus) that themed the entire page and often included small illustrations that would interact with the first letterform of the manuscript, this has been quickly drafted within my three approaches PDFs, using themed Lombardus for the start of each city would allow me to engage in large amounts of interesting experimentation in order to achieve a range of outcomes, the letterforms themselves could reflect the characteristics and idiosybcracies of the cities, as well as expand out to form a border of the text as shown in the slideshow below. I think that having a border to the paragraph could allow for greater experimentation of body copy manipulation, forming some kind of structure would allow me to layer the heirarchy better as well as allow me to include colourful and visually interesting fleurons as a garnish to the informative and engaging body copy that it contains.
While my colour scheme is black, red and white in this example, I think that having each letter as its own document would allow open up and opportunity to have a contrasting and different colour scheme for each city, this would perhaps allow me to utilise colour theory to better reflect the emotions and characterisitcs present within each city, or even simply having one colour scheme per chapter, e.g Navy and Slate Gray for Thin Cities & Red, green for Cities & Desire.
I think this approach has lots of potnential, but at the moment I am not sure how I would achieve a large format specification, given the small amount of body copy per city (Around half a side of A5). If I would then like to have one city per large format spread, this would need to be further explored if I choose to push this concept further.
Approach 2: Wheel Based Discovery Map
My second concept takes the format experimentation much further by having the spreads as a large circle with smaller circles placed ontop, this would allow for the body copy and headings to be re orientated at the viewers will, I think this as a concept shows huge potnential, dummy paragraphs and headings could sit on the borders of the circles as well as the actual copy, I think this gives a strong sense of discovery as well as perception, the actual shape of the page echoes the theme of cycles present within the book. The circles could exist as it’s own document or could be folded into a larger, rectangle book as shown in the top left, This allows the book to sit on a shelf comfortably, but would then have to be of a very large size in order to reach the brief requirements. I think that the idea of layering is also a strong concept, while I am currently thinkng of combining the layering concept within a circular format I think that having many translucent pages laying ontop of each other, each with their own small fragment of information, but when the reader lays them ontop of eachother in the correct orientation allows the reader to discover the full range of information of multiple cities, having the pages acting as only parts of a whole, challenging the traditional way of reading books as well as hopefully forcing the reader to read slower and prompting reflection after discovering each city/chapter.
Approach 3: Mind Atlas
My third concepts plays more on the theme of discovery again and more effectivly slows the reader down in their reading speed.
The basis for this concept is using a constrasting colour scheme (In this example I have used red and blue, but this could be any combination of colours) the copy and headings can then be placed on the page with 50% opacity, the reader, armed with a coloured acetate lens can then scroll through the page, with double stacked, illegible body copy with the naked eye, can then use the different coloured lenses to examine individual copy paragraphs in isolation allows the reader to literally discover each city for themselves.
My research into different designers using this techniques shows that it can be done and is easily achieved, additional visual language for this approach engages the idea that these cities do not exist, and are created from mere human perception and imagination, they only exist for the duration that the page is turned, linking this into a real life example, I came up with the conceppt for an “Atlas of the mind”. Prompted by the quote “Cities Constructed not of Steel, but of Thought”. I examined the visuals assosiated with the altas and the visuals associated with the mind and discovered that highlighted roads within an atlas are extremly similar visually to the neurons located within a persons brain, these are often used to store and recollect memory and so were perfect for experimentation.
Taking the Center of the neuron as the start of the readers journey and the outtravelling extremities as the reader travelling out and discovering the different cities present on the page, within my inital examples here I have illustrated the neuron visual and placed the different cities beside the “Arms” of the neuron, having the cities appear as destinations the reader reaches along the journey that “invisible cities” takes you on.
My inital thoughts for the pakaging would be taking a traditional fold out map, made with thin and easily folded paper to contain all the copy and headings for each chapter, one large map would fold out to a size of 500x500mm and contain five cities per map, exactly one chapter. These maps, when folded would be of a reduced size and then as a result could fit into a roughly traditionally sized box of pakage that is then branded with the cover, and introduction on the backside of the box, acting as a blurb, these maps would be loose within the box, alongisde the acetate lenses. By not having a concrete order to the maps and having them loose within the box it allows the reader to take their own approach to the reading of Invisible Cities. Allowing for the concept of perception and discovery to be prevelent throughout.
While traditonally I would include one chapter per map, given my acetate styled approach, I could indluce two chapters per map, having each city stacked ontop of each other this would create a confusing heirarchy to begin with, hopefully prompting the reader to realise they must utilise the acetate lens in order to gain access to the page infront of them.
I think this is my strongest concept to date, it still has lots of room of experimentation and further development, some aspects of approach one and two could be incorperated into my third approach. I think that key considerations here are my format, I think that simply putting my maps in a box is not very innovative and needs further consdieration, this format is fine and is funcitonal but i think there is so much more that can be done here and feel that, at the moment I am missing out on an interesting and innovative design opportunity.
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