Format: Paper, 9”x9”
Genre: Saddle stitch book
Winter 2023
This project’s task was to choose an artist and create a piece that shows off their work all while having the design emulate the process and value of their work, without just outright copying their style. The designer I chose for my piece was Ikko Tanaka, a prolific Japanese graphic designer well known from the 1950s until his death in the early 2000s. His work included a vast variety of print media, packaging, as well as advertisements and branding. The piece which I decided to create was a 28 page book chronicling the timeline of Tanaka’s work, exploring his portfolio as a sequence and telling his story at the same time. In terms of the book’s design, I went with a simplistic theme with a white and dark gold color scheme weaving–throughout the book in forms that change shape with every page. Although not drawing directly from Tanaka’s work to form the aesthetic of the piece, I thought more about his broader approach to creating art as inspiration. Tanaka’s art was well known for incorporating traditional Japanese elements with modern design styles, and this is what made his art stand out in the crowd in my opinion. So I decided that my book would combine two unlike ideas into one, which started from my idea to make the title of the book out of two contrasting typefaces. Overall, making this book helped me to understand better how to create a system, and how to integrate it but not duplicate it.