Time Lapse Book Design

The design begins with the challenge in showing behind the scenes processes with final design works? This leads to more questions such as: How can I make the book slower? Can a book document its own production? Can I consider each spread a frame in a storyboard?

The end result is a project book + photobook about the book itself. Every chapter begins with an image of a hand lifting away the previous spread, revealing the new chapter. I refer to this as the transitional spread. There is no large project title or chapter name anywhere in the book. This way the book feels like one large chapter in itself: My personal thesis year chapter at RISD.

The project the following spreads are documenting is a motion piece, a few among mostly printed projects. At this point, I wanted a break in rhythm within the book. The photographic gate-folds, in color, help do this, while still in the spirit of the overarching concept of the book.

As part of the thesis process, we were required to conduct an interview, and feature it in the book. Inspired by the physical book, I decided to interview Laurie Whitehill Chong, a Special Collections Librarian at the RISD Fleet Library.

Instead of the typical Q and A session, I presented 1 question: What makes the physical book special for her, and can you show me some examples of your favorite from the collection? The answers are illustrated in images of her reading through these delicate artists' books, no words were needed.

This particular image does not directly speak to a project. However, I felt that it was a very fitting image for the concept of the book where the line separating the final product and the behind-the-scenes imageries is blurred. Here, the camera is seen literally from the point of view of the book, at the position that I had used to capture all the previous transitional spreads.