work in progress – lesley's headspace

Mysterium Veritatis

Just a little book layout/experiment I decided to do. I’m basically almost done with the skeleton of the Paul/Pollux story, so I’m trying to come up with ideas about how to present the world I’ve built without spoiling the story. The plot twist (i.e. Paul = Pollux) can be made rather obvious and chronological, which is not exactly what I want.

At the moment I’m packaging the entire volume as part of something released by an organization called The Mystery Guild (I used this as a frame for my calendar project. I’ve been working on designing a proper logo for TMG to use in the project). The text in this InDesign document is mostly finalized, but the images are all fillers (just ignore them. Even the logos are just fillers I took from the Internet to act as visual placeholders before I finish the final logos and images).

Right now, I am working on

typography selection for main book (ignoring process book for now)
page layout for main book (paper size, grid, hierarchy)
format for main book (i.e. books within books, translucent pages)
typographic approach for Pollux’s story
how to tell the two stories side by side???
mini branding for The Mystery Guild (logo mostly)

Some ideas I have for the main book

translucent overlays of bone structures printed on tracing paper (or something similar) to be overlaid on anatomical drawings of creatures within Paul’s diary [if you read the previous post you know that Paul is a broke surgeon who makes cryptids for a living, just explaining this in case]
hardcover to be embossed with gold foil and book to be coptic bound so it can flip open easily
one colour accent within the book pages – not going full-colour at the moment as it doesn’t seem necessary
process diary look and feel will probably be informed by the main book, but the aesthetic for the process diary is going to be comparatively more raw (intended because it’s sort of a sketchbook/work-in-progress companion to the final space + book)

I’m going to work on the FYP Report only after I produce more work and experiment more. I haven’t yet found a good way to synthesize all the research I have such that it’s easily understood because I went all over the place with regard to what I was looking at and I’m not entirely sure how to organize it. After I work on more of the book (and do some test prints to see how the layout is shaping up), I’ll start on my report. By then I should be much clearer on how I want to proceed.

PS: Mysterium Veritatis is Google Translated Latin meaning ‘the secret truth’.

Work in progress update

111015 cards_formats

This is how the deck’s going so far in terms of just imagery, and here are some experiments as to how I can lay out each card. I haven’t been all too adventurous yet because I still need my system of organization, but I think I’m leaning towards removing the white frames around each card and having them either fully black with no visible border or fully white.

Card deck progress

I might rework some of these cards next semester but I’m quite happy with my progress so far. I’m aiming to finish 24 by the end of October, and use November and December to focus on refining the deck, the system and the book. I think I’m in a somewhat more settled place, and I’ve been using my time to work on compositions that play with 2D space and make reference to Harry Clarke and Aubrey Beardsley.

Some of my friends were really excited about the cards because they’re quite fond of Greek mythology too. One of my friends really liked the Persephone card (the composition and the sneaky skeletal Hades hand), so that reaffirmed my belief in my FYP and in the concept I’m pursuing. I still want to think about special printing after reading Neil Gaiman’s The Sleeper And The Spindle again – Chris Riddell’s illustrations are printed in black and white with gold as an accent and I’d love to know if that’s viable for me. I’m still quite taken with black and white because of Harry Clarke.

WIP illustrations

In chronological order, my drawing experiments for people with fingers growing out of their faces (to be explained in person, or in a future blog post). I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about the drawing style I’m going to use for my project and I’ve decided to go back to dotwork (thanks Beverley!).

Even if dotwork is slower, I reasoned to myself that my dotwork is astronomically better than my hatching and that I’d rather preserve the quality of my illustrations (that was the whole objective, right?). More medical weirdness coming soon – I think I have a much better idea of where I’m going now.