Typography II

Week 1: Assignment 1 Brief

According to Wikipedia, Creepypastas are horror-related legends that have been copied and pasted around the Internet. Creepypasta has since become a catch-all term for any horror content posted onto the internet. These Internet entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal stories intended to scare readers. For this assignment, you will design a graphic system of five book covers of Creepypasta stories and the layout of the text of one of these books.

The book covers must work together as if they were part of a collection, while designing the layout will allow you to explore different ways of presenting a text. Consider that book covers include front, back, and spine. Alternative, the book cover can also include the dust jacket with front and back flaps. This assignment will be an experimental work where you can play with typography, format, and the grid to present the stories while preserving common aspects of a book such as page and section numbering, headers, or image captions. It is also an opportunity to play with binding options. For inspiration, look at the work of David Carson, April Greiman, Dan Friedman, Zuzana Licko, Jeffery Keedy, or Lorraine Wild, or even classic designers like Ladislav Sutnar, Jost Hochuli, Karel Teige, Wolfgang Weingart or Jan Tschichold.

If you are not comfortable working with Creepypastas, you are free to explore other forms of internet literature such as Fanfiction, pastiches, found poetry, or other formats you might find interesting. However, the rest of the requirements and constraints of this assignment still apply.

For reference, visit this link to see a selection of the most read Creepypasta:

Activities

1. Introduction: Course structure, objectives, and rules.

2. Description of the semester’s assignments.

3. In-class: research

Assignments

1. Select 5 Creepypastas that somehow thematically relate to each other.

2. Choose one story that interests you and read it before week 4.