OUGD501 - Page One: Great Expectations: Seventy Graphic Solutions

Page 1: Great Expectations is an unusual typographic experiment designed to explore the relationship between graphic design, typography and the reading of a page, revealing the power typography has to influence and affect the way we all interpret a text.

The book collects the responses of 70 international graphic designers when posed the same brief - to design and lay out the first page of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, a text chosen in part because it directly references lettering as Pip searches for clues about his family and the letterforms inscribed on their tombstone. The brief encouraged the contributors to explore, challenge or celebrate the conventions of book typography. Each layout is accompanied by a short rationale explaining the designer's decision-making process.

Examples:

Jonathon Barnbrook

One of the ideas taken from this research that could be transferred into my own publication and designs was to think about how everyday things are presented and/or produced - are they objective or subjective? Are they universal? For instance, newspapers. Other ideas thought about how the text of my essay could be translated into something else, something more visual, for instance imagery, QR codes, mark-making, etc. Also think about potential contrasts between text and image - what could be communicated from this? Pick out quotes from my essay and highlight these in some way - bold, outlined, framed?