The Book of No

One of my favorite typographic assignments from design school, this was from our Mysterious Signs project. Our task was to create a set of six signs, install them somewhere temporarily, photograph them and then create a book illustrated by them. It was up to us to create either a book that explained or further compounded the mystery.

I found inspiration in a series of text messages sent over a fall semester and a strangely poetic set of public information icons used to explain things you could or couldn’t do in parks, rest stops and on freeways. Seems appropriate that you can’t just eat your fish anywhere you like. The hypothetical narrator of The Book of No gets more perturbed and fixated on the rules and sub-rules essential for everyday living, leading up to a very bizarre ending complete with ponies and rabbits.

The signs were vinyl lettering printed on gatorboard, made to the dimensions of real street parking signs in Vancouver. I kept in the strange spacing in front of numbers and the centered text.

The text messages I used in each sign became surreal references out of context. This one was more about missing a show if I didn’t arrive before midnight, but it could easily be about the mothership leaving without me.

Boxes within boxes define the content areas, visually reinforcing the control issues of the narrator and extreme strictness of the various arbitrary rules.

---

Comments RSS You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.