Extreme Scale
Graduate Studio
Prompt: Define “extreme scale” in your own way. Content must be autobiographical; something about you.
Extreme Scale was an interesting project because we didn’t have much time to do it, and there wasn’t an amazing amount of information in terms of what it should become; the prompt was intentionally ambiguous and up for interpretation. This is how I interpreted it.
When I think of scale, I tend to go straight for big. My instinct as a designer is to go bigger and bolder, so I thought it would be a nice change of pace to intentionally go smaller instead. I decided I’d make books that were small in both size and length; each are 2x2 inches and contain only four spreads. I made 10 of these, thinking of a bigger scale in terms of quantity of books rather than quantity of pages.
For the content, I decided I would make these like little photo albums. I take so many pictures, I thought it would be nice to put them all to good use. It also is very me; I’m really visual and keep a bunch of visual journals, so this is really a digital version of things I make all the time. Each picture is from different times in my life, from 20 years ago to 2 weeks ago, all chosen for its own reason. I included a small excerpt on each spread to explain why each picture was chosen.
Further exploring scale in different ways, I used the layout to experiment with different elements. Every page number on the left side is very small, while the page numbers on the right take up the entire page. The pictures are really big and the excerpt are incredibly small. I tried to keep the inside simple but dynamic. All of the colors used in the various gradients were pulled directly from each picture, with the cover gradients being two out of the four colors shown inside the book.
This is the most successful project for me of the semester, in my opinion, and the most visually appealing. I feel I got it to a very resolved place that I’m really happy with, and I love how these books photograph together.
Extreme Scale
Fall 2020
Bookmaking
Jenna Benoit
Graduate Studio
Experimenting with Extreme Scale and Autobiographical Content.
Extreme Scale was an interesting project because we didn’t have much time to do it, and there wasn’t an amazing amount of information in terms of what it should become; the prompt was intentionally ambiguous and up for interpretation. This is how I interpreted it.
When I think of scale, I tend to go straight for big. My instinct as a designer is to go bigger and bolder, so I thought it would be a nice change of pace to intentionally go smaller instead. I decided I’d make books that were small in both size and length; each are 2x2 inches and contain only four spreads. I made 10 of these, thinking of a bigger scale in terms of quantity of books rather than quantity of pages.
For the content, I decided I would make these like little photo albums. I take so many pictures, I thought it would be nice to put them all to good use. It also is very me; I’m really visual and keep a bunch of visual journals, so this is really a digital version of things I make all the time. Each picture is from different times in my life, from 20 years ago to 2 weeks ago, all chosen for its own reason. I included a small excerpt on each spread to explain why each picture was chosen.
Further exploring scale in different ways, I used the layout to experiment with different elements. Every page number on the left side is very small, while the page numbers on the right take up the entire page. The pictures are really big and the excerpt are incredibly small. I tried to keep the inside simple but dynamic. All of the colors used in the various gradients were pulled directly from each picture, with the cover gradients being two out of the four colors shown inside the book.
This is the most successful project for me of the semester, in my opinion, and the most visually appealing. I feel I got it to a very resolved place that I’m really happy with, and I love how these books photograph together.
Extreme Scale
Fall 2020
Bookmaking
