Our Design final was to make an artist's book on a person or event of our choice. I chose Malcolm X, because while I didn't know what I wanted to say about him, I knew that he was an interesting character, and there would be something to say.
What captivated me the most was a quote from Malcom's Autobiography, made not long before his assassination:
"I did many things as a Muslim that I’m sorry for now. I was a zombie then—like all Muslims—I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. Well, I guess a man’s entitled to make a fool out of himself if he’s ready to pay the cost." - Malcolm X
I chose a back-to-back accordion format for the book to create inner and outer faces. Scrolling around the entire length of the outer face is a transcript of one of Malcolm's early speeches. In this speech he reveals some of the Nation of Islam's beliefs, one of the most important being that white people were created by the devil to create chaos and oppress blacks.
I designed this text to appear as a formidable, univiting wall, evocative of a rant. I bolded some of the more outrageous lines in order to help the viewer pick out which parts were worth reading.
The view when the book is taken out of the box.
The back view.
The format of the book prompts the viewer to peer through the rips or over the sides to try and find out what the inner cavity says. As the book continues the outer face starts to peel away; anger gives way to regret.
My table from final crit showing some of the research, prototypes, and experimentation that contributed to the final book.
The most obvious difference between my complete prototype (above) and my final (below) is the way that the front face is ripped to reveal the inner cavity of the book. I realized that, as both texts treated the book as a single page, the ripping pattern needed to follow suit.
