Cut n Paste workshop
when first looking at the rules provided by corita kent, the one about happiness resonated with me the most.
rule 9: be happy whenever you can manage it. enjoy yourself. its lighter than you think.
i immediately thought about the child-like nature of a set of rules like these, and it reminded me of the quotes and lists like these my mom would distribute and print out for my sister and i growing up.
i decided to just go first with creating the first thoughts that came to my head and see where it took me. thinking about the phrase “be happy” and the associations i had with that (especially as a child), i thought about how a literal bee is used often in conjunction with this phrase.
so i created the bee and the eyes with the “happy” as the mouth soon followed in my train of thought of “child-like” representations.
after building the “be happy”, I decided the rest of the text could be laid out above and below it without the use of this type of graphics. to create and interesting/more dynamic flow, I rotated the “rule” text and added a few more graphical elements to help the eye move through the text in an orderly manner. —(arrows, lines).
when laying out the text, I added a slight “grid” or lines to line up some the of the text (”09” with “whenever”) so that the design could have a bit more structure as a whole.
in terms of the choice to use varying sizes of letters, it slightly came from the fact that i could only find different sizes of the letters i needed, but also i thought the look of multi-size text played nicely into the “child-like” familiarity i wanted the design to have
and lastly, i decided last minute to add the sun, because in my mind, i interpret the quote as using “lighter” not in terms of weight, but in terms of bright, warm feeling i associate with light and the sun and the way that this is what happiness feels like to me.
in class, we ideated together on different ideas we may have for the guidebook and loosely went off guided questions in order to get the thoughts flowing. i was pretty sure going into this brainstorming session that i wanted to do a topic that related to food/culinary world since that is where my interests lie (possibly wanting to go to culinary school and combining design w food world). so, my immediate ideas all stemmed from what i already know/what i enjoy diving deeper in when it comes to food. besides truly food based ideas like all about eggs or all about toast, i also thought about the idea of how to throw a dinner party since i have a lot of both culinary but also visual knowledge around the subject. also, the idea of how to build a perfect sandwich intrigued me since there is so much that actually goes into the flavors, textures, and balance about a good sandwich and teaches one rules about pairing food/creating dishes that they could apply to other culinary attempts aside from sandwiches. ultimately, everyone whom i was brainstorming with were really stricken with the toast idea the most and i liked the idea of approaching such a commonplace, simple item with a in depth perspective that would allow me to mircro analyze every component of toast- and ultimately take the simple and unexpecting idea of toast to the extreme
in terms of the structure of the book, it will not be a step by step, counting or rules, but instead a sort of non-linear section progression in which knowledge is piled onto the user as it builds from section to section, so that at the end they will have a full knowledge of how to make perfect toast and simply the extent to which toast has a far reaching potential
in terms of who may be getting this knowledge or reading, i expect it to be anyone who enjoys toast or wants to learn a bit about how they can elevate their usual toasts. you wouldn’t have to be a toast fanatic to read/enjoy nor do you have to be culinaryly inclined, just simply someone who relates to the comfort and ease of toast.
i would hope the voice/tone of the book would be slightly analytical and descriptive at times, while also throwing in some personal anecdote and emotion as i get to know the reader, while also making sure there is some humor/light heartedness since this topic is fun and light