FASE-BOOK

Things are finally starting to take form. I’ve been working hard the last few days, and this is what came out. The book “100 days to become a better graphic designer” which is actually still a working title. I’ve always been kind of sceptic about manuals, “whatever-for-dummies” and guides, so I decided this book should be a satire on all that, since there are actually no real rules to graphic design for me, just my own meandering experience. -steal!- Part of it will be ironic, part will be telling about my own experiences and my views after 4 years of studying the subject, and part of it will be about the experiences with the people I met, all of this in this 100 spreads. The build-up will be based on different archetypes I’ve met on my trip, almost abstracting them to some kind of tarot characters, which I will also be making symbols for. The art critic, the conceptualist and the sculptress are some of the examples. these will be the main sections of the book, I’ll be categorising the tips/experiences into those, one spread per idea, documenting it with pictures and illustrations. anyway, here’s some of the first try-outs for an identity for my book, and the first pieces of text. I’ve got about 30 concepts for pages ready now, as you can see, it’s kind of a mess right now, but that’s the way I like to work…

And because I’m such a nice person, I’ll also give you a short excerpt from one of the pages.

“Real men don’t read manuals

Randomness is the best thing that ever happened to me.
Make mistakes and create errors, and lots of them. Try out functions you don’t know in the programs you work with.
If you get something new, experiment with it before you read the manual. And if possible, don’t read the manual at all. It might take you a little longer to learn, but hey, you’re a creative person, aren’t you? You’ll figure it out, and you’ll end up using the program in a way that nobody else does, and in ways even the developers didn’t think of. Make it your own.”

This would be the explanation, together with pictures, designs I’ve made in the past, and how the experience with the artist of that section has added to that. So next are some basic draw-outs for the book/cover.

Oh yeah, about the logo… (also still a working piece)

I’ve had this thing with prism forms all through my journey for some strange reason. I don’t know why, but they always kept coming back into my designs, I think it has something to do with itineraries. I had this thing when I was about 12 years old where I used to draw out dots, and then connect them all to eachother, creating this maze of lines, and I think it kind of returned to me when I was sketching out my itinerary. and the prism-forms come from the thought that this project is not moving in a forward in a single way, for me it’s more of a cluster of connections made by the traveling, less deterministic. this is also why I didn’t want to decide what exactly I wanted to do with it up ’till now. And yes, to me, this explanation makes perfect sense. Well, that, and procrastination.

So, in short, you’ll see the prisms returning all through the book.