Ninth Letter
Ninth Letter is jointly sponsored by the Department of English and the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois; it is an interdisciplinary collaborative project that attracts people interested in the intersection of written and visual culture. Professors and students in both departments collaborate to create each issue. I had the opportunity to contribute the Fall 06 issue. The main themes of this issue dealt with ideas of reality/nonreality and about time and space. These ideas drove my proposed cover design. Compositionally the the strong lines divide up the page both 2 dimensionally and back into space in 3 dimensions. The chaotic and blurred layout has a dynamic movement between the elements. The cover is slightly tilted, exposing fake edges of the magazine and calling into question the reality of the cover. It also serves the dual marketing purpose of looking intriguing on the magazine rack. I designed 2 stories for the magazine. Notes on the Space We Take was a non-fiction story about the different amounts of space that humans and animals use throughout their lives. Instead of simply illustrating the text , I decided on a solution that explored typographic space on the page. The design becomes a kind of second narrative to the original text. The Paper Life They Lead is a fictional story about a farmer and his family who live a life full of hardships on the side of a Pepperidge Farms cookie bag. Branding the story in such a way as to resemble a Pepperidge farm box seemed the logical solution.
Project Roles: Graphic Design, Concept Development, Creative Lead
