The major figures, movements, & developments in Graphic Design
Book Project
This was a year-long project that I slowly worked on weekly. I was inspired by a visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum which held a small collection of printing presses and old technologies of the like, witnessing the only tools designers had available back then was sobering. I grew up in the age of digital technology, it is so easy to do nearly everything - writing, sketching, animating, and so on are just a double-click of a programme away, I don’t need a typewriter or a bulky piece of machinery for anything to work. It really put my current life into perspective, and I held a new-found deep reverence for the designers, illustrators, and writers of the past, and I possessed a desire to explore more. There is so much history to everything; anything is interesting enough if you look deeply into it.
I initially started by just looking up certain people and devices that held significance in the Graphic Design sphere on Wikipedia, and as I looked into more and more people the idea of compiling all of this information in an easily digestible manner grew stronger. I thought about making a video on it, it’d allow me to practice my After Effects skills and try out a new format of communication, but I decided against it. The idea of a book(let) rattled around too, it would be easy to keep on top of and more in line with my current strengths. Since this was for fun, I decided to just go along with the book idea and started compiling the information.
The book at its conception was crudely styled after the subject matter, I didn’t love the idea or execution of that so I, as per usual, pivoted hard to the other, very vibrant, side. The new style is vaguely similar to printer tests, which from memory I have been interested in since childhood - they always looked so intricate, like an alien language which is so different that we just could not understand it. For inspiration, I ripped small pieces of printer tests from boxes whilst working at B&Q and just rested them alongside my monitor. As I filled the book in, I looked for ways to incorporate this style in unique and interesting ways, and sometimes I may have done too much, but I’d rather do too much than too little.
For this final presentation, I took the book to 3D. I wanted to create a rigged book model with which I could turn the pages as much as I wanted, but after a couple of days of not getting the results I wanted, I took my troubles to the web. Max Edge’s fantastic work with geometry nodes allowed me to visualise the book much more easily and realistically than my previous attempts.
To access the PDF of the book, click here.