I’m not an author, so taking this course was pretty daunting. However, day one we were introduced to the concept of Artist Books; all qualms I had vanished. The Marriott Library has a wonderful collection of rare and unique artist books, some of which barely seem like books at all.
One was a scarf?
Unlimited. Creative. Reign. I didn’t have to write anything if I didn’t want to. Yet, I still wanted to tell a story. With the wind at my back, I began ideating.
concept:
Reality is so entertaining, why not let it write my book for me?
I used my problem-solving skills to circumvent the narrative creation. This is where they come in. My little group of muses, The Ricks. I live a mundane life, I do similar stuff most weekends, this group is full of recurring characters; why not document them?
So, I gathered the Ricks and got them drunk to exploit them for content; with their explicit consent of course.
Once I had the recording, I had to turn it into something. It was over three hours of absolute drunken garble. After spending hours upon hours teasing through the audio, I was able to handpick some of my favorite bits. I decided to utilize timestamps from the recording, marking my favorite quotes. The result was “SNAPSHOT”, a chronological record of the events of that night.
The timestamps provide a timeline, and each shot would mark a chapter.
Design-wise, I was heavily inspired by my parents' polaroids from the 80’s; they were always full of cool kids, partying and having a good time. This was the epitome of what eight-year-old Britney wanted to achieve. Using polaroids of my actual friends, from actual parties helped to recreate this feeling. The rest of the book needed to feel personal and genuine in a similar way. Slowly I began to build a system by which I would design the book:
Restricted Color Palette
One Typeface & Size
Polaroid Images
Hand Illustrations
Stuck on the concept of “documentation” I chose a single type-size in a monospace font, a callback to the typewriter forms of yesteryear.
Imagery-wise, for the hand drawings to exude the same sense of "personal" presented by the polaroids. I decided to hand sketch all of the imagery. To edition this, instead of digital printing, I decided to learn how to make polymer plates, to letterpress all of the hand-drawn content.
