The Amani Book

Cover Design



Page layout

I had the great advantage to work with a very open client that provided me with good materials to work with. My task was, apart from designing a cover that fits the mood, to do all the design for the inside of the book. Setting a book from scratch was a very good experience and came at the right time as well, as I would soon start to prepare my own.

Even the location of the illustrations can provide different relations of them with the text which in turn can affect the way that the whole page, if not book, is perceived.

When designing for thousands of copies costs can eliminate creativity and some creative sacrifices have been made for the shake of making the whole process more cost-effective.

Random Doodles

It is quite revealing what people draw while they are on the phone. This one was done while I was waiting to speak to a computer supplier, for more than 25 minutes. I think I got quite angly at the time..

MA posters

Kinetic Typography

Kinetic typography refers to the art and technique of expression with animated text. Similar to the study of traditional typography of designing static typographic forms, kinetic typography focuses on understanding the effect time has on the expression of text. Kinetic typography has demonstrated the ability to add significant emotive content and appeal to expressive text, allowing some of the qualities normally found in film and the spoken word to be added to static text. Kinetic type has been widely and successfully used in film as well as in television and computer-based advertising. Perceptual psychology research on attention, reading performance, and comprehension has indicated that time-based presentation of text can be used effectively to capture and manipulate a viewer’s attention and in some cases improve overall reading performance.

Name Calling

A long list of names influential in the field of design, sorted by birth date.

Currents
1890 Modernism
1916 Dadaism
1917 De Stijl
1919 Russian Constructivism
1919 Bauhaus

1961 Fluxus 1 2

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Before 1910
1881 Fernand Léger i
1890 El Lissitzky
1895 László Moholy-Nagy a i

1911-1920
1911 Bill Golden
1911 William (Bill) Bernbach 1
1914 Paul Rand
AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts)
1918 Herb Lubalin
1918 Lou Dorfsman Quote Images 1 2
1920 Armin Hoffman

1921-1930
1921 Robert Gage

Reference Materials

Books
Paul Rand, by Steven Heller
Design Basics Index, by Jim Krause
Creative Sparks, by Jim Krause

About Face, by David Jury

Movies
Helvetica, by Garry Hustwit

Blogs
Peter Gabor

Word Ranch

Certain words carry an aura of mystery with them, either because their meaning is obscure, or perhaps they are used less frequently, or they they are consisted by a group of characters that just look good together. I will use and re-edit this post to keep them all group and prevent them from running stray.

cantankerous : Ill-tempered and quarrelsome; disagreeable
irascible : Prone to outbursts of temper; easily angered.
ubiquitous : Existing or being everywhere, or in all places, at the same time.
vernacular : Being or characteristic of or appropriate to everyday (localised) language (visuals - aesthetics)

Old thoughts

Some of the photoshop collages made in the previous year.