Journey of Helvetica
The brief for this project was to create a E-book that celebrates a typographic culture, I chose to design a E-book that celebrated the controversial typeface among designers, helvetica. Often disregarded as the obvious typeface. This E-book uses content from Paul Shaw's "Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story". My book is called "journey of helvetica" relating to the reference to the subway but also to the fact the book is designed to take you on a journey. The book has the tag line of a “submersive book” the idea being that the reader is engaged in the book and has to interact with it by turning the orientation to be able to understand the book.
Taking some of the design history from helvetica I looked in to swiss modernism and used this as a basis for my books overall look. When I researched further I came across a editorial layout in a book by Karl Gertsher called the boat to europe. In this book the layout is based on the narrative of the chapter. I took this concept and applied it to my book where the viewer goes through a journey during the book. There are aspects of the layout in the editorial which may be unnerving or uncomfortable to the reader. This is a design choice to represent the feeling that people often feel when travelling on the subway.
Front and back covers of the book. Through out the book you follow a journey, this is symbolised by a line or text which you follow thorugh the book. On the front and back covers these lines rejoin to show a complete circuit or journey, something that people do on the subway every day.
This is a love hate page which gives positive or negative opinions on helvetica. There is a clever play with the way love and hate are represented so that on is upside down from each other. This is to give unsettling feeling to the viewer as a representative of what people can sometimes feel on the subway. The ability to switch and rotate the E-book and have interactivity with the book is one of the benifits of a E-book over a printed book.
Various pages which compare the two typefaces that were used on the subway, which are helvetica and
akzidenz grotesk. On these pages you can swipe the letters across so that you can compare them directly.
Each chapter was reworded by myself so i could then dictate the flow or journey i wanted the reader to go on.
Each chapter also relates to a real life station, the chapter length corresponds with how busy that the station is e.g larger chapter busier station. The Chapter titles use splashes of colour that relate to a route available from that station with each chapter having their own colour.
Here is a story board for the entire book. You can start to see how the journey is symbolised in the idea of a line going through the whole book. The book consists of two large pages which extend beyond the diameters of an ipad page and allow the user to interact and move through the book and explore freely whilst following the journey. These pages symbolise the journey whilst being on a train. The pages inbetween are pages which act as something a little bit less intense than the main body copy, these pages symbolise being at a station and waiting for the train to arrive.
Thanks for looking
