THE SEEN, UNSEEN Project #4
Katie Ehrlich
PROJECT SUMMARY For this project, we had to visit a place we had never been and design something that captures the experience of being there. I chose Grand Central Market in my hometown of Los Angeles. I wanted to visit the market because of its rich and iconic history in the city. Its vibrant atmosphere was perfect for me to shoot street photographs, which I have never gotten the chance to include in a project before.
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INSPIRATION Magazines that I loved
My biggest inspiration for this project was Cereal magazine. It is a lifestyle and travel magazine that features large beautiful photographs on very simple grids. The layouts are clean but never boring. The issues have a very editoral look while still maintaining a personal vibe. I also looked at other magazines with similar feels such as Kinfolk and egoreview Los Angeles. 5
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LAYOUT THUMBNAILS Figuring out a grid system
I studied the layouts of those magazines to thumbnail different spread designs and grid systems. I also brainstormed what type of flow I wanted the photographs to take and how to incorporate captions.
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FIRST DRAFTS Building the first few pages
I knew I wanted to open the book on this image of people hustling through the stairs into the market. It perfectly captured the energy, diversity, and visual language of the space. But after that I had to figure out how to define the market through design. At first I had a directory listing all of the stalls, but ended up cutting it out. The book is about walking through the
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space and experiencing it, not listing all the specific food options. But I did keep the description page to give a background of the importance of the space in downtown Los Angeles and to describe my experience walking through it. I also tried hand-inking the titles to add a human touch to the book, but they really clashed with the feel of the images.
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CREATING AN EXPERIENCE Arranging photos to make a journey
I really wanted the reader to feel like they were naturally moving through the space. So I began with a spread of these great red stairs that lead down into the market. I continued with more zoomed out shots on the general market vibe: people, stools, and neon signs. I then zoomed back into more details of specific places. The color temperature moves from warm reds and oranges to cooler hues towards the end. The captions help orient the viewer by calling out specific stalls or locations and what they serve.
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TWEAKING THE FLOW Rearranging to improve the narrative
Printing and rearranging the spreads physically was helpful in achieving that flow through the space. It also helped eliminate certain spreads that did not fit with the overall feel. Some were lacking the human element or did not make sense with the larger narrative, which was not obvious until laying out the prints.
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COVER DRAFTS My biggest struggle
A particular difficult part of this project was the cover. I wanted it to be eye-catching and introduce the space well, but not steal the thunder of the first spread. I started out with a smaller image on the front to contrast with the huge image inside, but I received feedback that it looked to much like a title page. The direction I ended up going with (the last one shown) features a
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photo of the architecture and neon signs under a flap with the title. The flap added some extra visual interest as well as creating a physical entry into the space behind it, which is a nice metaphor. This design also can be printed as just a white column over the photo instead of a flap, which is good for when I print multiple copies or if it ever got mass-produced.
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FINAL The finishing touches & future edits
I made quite a few final tweaks that I felt really brought things together. The sans serif typeface was dropped completely and the text was changed to a bright blue to reflect the vibrant blue neon signs. In the captions each business’s name is bolded to help give a better sense of wayfinding. The page numbers were moved up and inwards to feel less default and more contemporary. The book was printed and perfect bound professionally at Hi Tec Copy, which I felt was really necessary to give it the magazine quiality I imagined. Moving forward, I am going to brighten some of the darker images that lost their vibrancy in printing. I also might still explore more cover options and add the subhead back in to give context. Lastly, I want to add a “0” in front of the single digit page numbers to give them weight.
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