Design Hero — Booklet
We’re starting the booklet now. I’m kind of scared for this one, since it’s a test for the flexibility and scalability of the design system I created. My main goal for this book is to tell a story.
I didn’t really plan much for my sketches. Mostly, I went with an image-focused layout and typography to fill in and mark negative spaces. Gao Han is not the type of designer to use a lot of graphics, so I try to lean away from that as well.
I imagined the middle spread to be a very image-focused, gallery-like experience. This sketch focused on that aspect and used a lot of images to convey the density of his works.
Things I like and don’t like:
- Like rectangular framed images, large text, and small descriptions
- Not a fan of the sparse composition tbh, need to work on the negative space
Also, I’m thinking about the logic behind the images. Should they be purely decorative or kind of follow his story?
Rough Draft
I decided to start with the index page. With the vast amount of content he has, I’m pretty sure there will be a lot of space to explore.
I found a very stylistically interesting book called “REFRAMING: Constructed Realities in the Digital Realm”. It uses a square grid that keeps everything in proportion and creates a very geometric style. I want to incorporate this into my book’s grid system.
Starting, I used the frame tool to create many small frames to measure proportions. I found it better to use smaller, denser grids rather than larger ones. It makes layouts more flexible and free-flowing.
One problem with having so many frames is that it’s killing my RAM. My poor computer couldn’t handle so many at once, so I have to redraw the grid with guides.
Afterwards, I added the frames back on, but this time 2x2.
Creating the Index:
Using the Reframing book as the reference, I used the grid as a system to ensure every image is a proper 2x2 square. The large text is the center of hierarchy for now, but I might increase some image sizes later.
There is a balance between too Swiss and too messy that I have to be careful with. Since my booklet has to be more systematic and organized, I don’t want to lose the experimental feeling of my poster. At the same time, I felt the poster was a bit too artsy, and I’ll probably have to redo it sometime in the future.
Brett’s Crit:
- I need to focus on the story first, rather than the composition. Think of what his personal brand is, and start from there.
- Two directions I can go to: His balance of pragmatic minimalism and anti-trendness. I want to create an arc that goes from minimalism to expressionism, and back to minimalism.
Decided to finish this page first. I’m also experimenting with a new workflow, where I finalize one page to its high-fidelity page and set that as the reference for my other pages. Whereas previously, I would have tried to scale the fidelity of all the pages at the same time.
The Story:
- Introduction, Tablet of Contents
- A more elaborate intro into his early life and work history. Images of his most famous works and captions about them
- A deep dive into his philosophy: Logic over beauty, instinct with systems.
- Index. A dramatic showcase of his work, focusing on overwhelming the viewer with breath and quantity. Showcase his experimental nature and creative vision.
- Timeline. Using work as a focus, showing how his projects gradually increased and expanded over time. More about showing what work he did in which year, rather than his life, because there is a lack of information about it.
- Call out to his love for Typography.
- ending, why I chose him.
The main design principle I want to express is that his work tells his story, not himself or his life. I want to balance out the prominence of my design system with his projects, so the projects shine over the typography of the spreads.
Creating the Design System:
After being done with the index page, I used it as the starting reference to create a design system.
I deliberately chose to only use Manrope for the entire system. This keeps things consistent and shifts the focus towards the composition, instead of the typography. It also aligns with one of his quotes:
“The ideas that can be communicated clearly with words doesn’t need any additional elements. It’s an efficient method. My approach to typography comes from my way of thinking, which is very “non-visual”. When I think of a problem, I don’t think if it’s going to look pretty, but rather if it makes sense.”
From my research, Gao Han likes to use only neutral typefaces, so that’s also an area that I kept closely to his philosophy.
The Second Page
Based on the index page, I also came up with the second page that used his quote as the main guide.
In class, the main feedback was that I was playing too safely with my iterations. I also think I could be more experimental. But I want to keep the work at the center focus instead of his face and his personality.
Going more wild:
Brett once said: Always go wild rather than playing safe. It’s easy to pull back from being too wild, but much harder to push for more when playing it safe.
I do like this one a lot more. It’s much more spread out, but still has a scanable composition. A concern I have is not overusing the text-scattering composition; that will get old really quickly.
Joanna’s crits:
- I can be experimental with more variations
- Perhaps incorporate a very distinct serif typeface somewhere into the page?
- Like the density of the square images, but current overused, and steals attention from the effect of the index page.
- Think about the balance between his words and his life more, and think about when it’s appropriate to break the system.
Brett’s crits:
- Be more established with the system before even thinking about breaking it
- Don’t attempt to break it just for the sake of experimentation, but have an actual logic and reasoning behind it
- Agree with Joanna that the image is overused
It’s difficult to create a logic for how I’m thinking about the images, so that’s something I’ll figure out later.
After Spring Break:
I didn’t find time to do a lot of work over the break, so everything afterwards will be a retelling of the process from the future. Anyways, here's what happened.
I went back and restructured my story more closely based on the sketch. Specifically, I wanted to add a page dedicated to his philosophy towards typography. There are a lot of key pages — Timeline, index, intro, Table of Contents, but the rest have a lot of freedom I need to fill in.
So far, the rough structure will be this, to be exact:
Cover
Intro, Table of Contents
A dive into his life, extending both pages
An intro into his philosophy (already designed)
Index (already designed)
timeline from his postgrad to his current years
His philosophy for typography
citations
Back Cover
Looking at more inspo:
Im starting to reference a lot more and implement my design system for other pages. This is the intro and TOC page.
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Some things to note:
- I wanna keep the TOC page very minimal, and use negative space to prime the theme of neutral + logic focused.
- I’m experimenting more with the typesetting of paragraphs, and using them as the more “experimental” elements to represent his “wild side”.
Im using duplicated images as a placeholder for now. I really enjoy the denser images with a more gridded feeling, instead of the larger images.
There were some other iterations for certain pages. But so far, I’m trying my best to finalize the composition for everything before I have to fill in the images…
Brett’s Crit:
- Use fewer images on the text-dense pages, and have them be a gradual increase towards the index and timeline pages.
- Enlarge some images and play around more with the intro page?
- The ending page feels too dense and unspecific compared to the rest of the booklet.
Cover
I struggled a lot during the process of creating the cover. For now, I’ll stick to something minimalistic and simple, and change it later.
Revising the ending page
Post crit, I’m playing around with simplifying the ending page a lot more. I decided to use his portrait as the primary focus, kind of like a reveal after displaying so many pictures of his works on the page ahead.
I decided to use one series of images from his interview with play/GROUND, instead of multiple, unrelated portraits. So I filled in the earlier pages with scenes from the interview.
More iterations for the ending page…
Ultimately, the ending page was finalized as extremely simple. I wanted a “fade out” transition between the large, all-caps titles and the final centered portrait.
Going back…
During this entire thing, my process was very non-linear. I constantly went back and forth between pages, trying to adjust and tweak the details.
I added a lot more text into this spread… and pushed for more of an “explanatory” documentary style of captioning.
At the same time, I used more quirky transitions and drop caps for the start of the paragraphs. Since the type is all over the place, this helps to guide the viewer’s attention.
I’m a bit worried about going back and forth between working on major changes that feel like they're progressing and the tiny details that might not matter in the long run. It feels more productive to prioritize the large changes, but I always forget about the small changes later.
Up until this point, I was never that careful about my “process” per se. But having done a lot of interviews and written case studies, I’m starting to pay more attention to how to format this very messy, very back-and-forth process into something interesting. I’m thinking of adding a “backlog” and a project management system in Notion or Google Docs, but not sure about the actual utility of that.
Oh well… I guess recording in Medium is a part of the process, too. As of right now, I’m not sure if the process is just something to be accepted of, or something I can actively improve on.
Moving back into the refinement…
One issue that Brett brought up was the lack of extremely large images. So I added this placeholder on the left of his intro page.
Update… I decided to use Heytea as a primary driver for his introduction. Since it’s what most people know him for, it is fair to use that as a key reference for his works beyond.
Finally… The Timeline
This was the page I struggled with the most so far. Images don’t feel cohesive when they are scattered across the page like this, so I had to come up with a better Formula.
After talking with Joanna… I’ve decided to switch to white for this version.
The idea is that his earlier years would have less work, and gradually ramp up into his later years.
The white version definitely feels a lot more cohesive than the black version. Im not sure about the structure of the page, though. The index on the right feels too heavy and dense.
Ended up just removing the index altogether and adding in the descriptions under the images instead. This version feels more spacious.
I also added white, faded squares on the left side to symbolize all of his past works. Although there was barely any information about his early years, the white squares added an interesting appeal to show that he still did a lot, it’s just undocumented.
Some more last-minute refinement…
I wasn’t a big fan of the initial table of contents page, since it felt very jumbled together. Ultimately, I decided to have a solid contrast of black for his intro and white for the table of contents. I enjoy the juxtaposition between the left’s heavy and dense nature, compared to the right’s sparse and large amounts of white space.
I am not the biggest fan of the left’s composition. In the future, I’ll probably be changing it a lot.
Finally… The cover
I put together this quick cover as a reference for the future iterations, but it’s probably something to be changed after animation.
Final!
Reflection
Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the quality of my output for this booklet. I believe I was trying at my 80% capacity, with all of the classes, recruiting, and exams going on. Once everything settles down, I’ll revisit the booklet and refine it to the max.
In terms of the actual book itself, I felt there weren’t a lot of extremely challenging areas that I really struggled with. Aside from setting up the system and the grid, everything else was just a matter of exploration, iteration, and refinement. I believe what Brett said was right: “Sometimes the best works come easy, and the worst works come hard.”
The project is definitely not finished yet… so I’ll leave a more formalized reflection at the end of Design Hero. But in its current state, I believe I still have the potential to push some more.
Onto the next!
