Editorial Type Process Book Nov 6 – Dec 6, 2018 Lily Greenwald
"My goal is just to be funny." -Maya Rudolph
This project began by choosing a speech. Immediately, I knew what I wanted from a speech: humor. When I get into “YouTube holes,” I tend to watch a couple commencement speeches, and although the inspirational ones are great, those that have a comediate kick always have a lasting impression on me. So, I decided to start my search for a speach by looking up “funny commencement speeches” and I stumbled across Maya Rudolph’s at Tulane from a few years ago. I thought this would be perfect as Maya Rudolph is not just Maya Rudolph but a countless number of characters. I wanted to take this opporutnity to use image and type expressively to reflect her different personalities in an editorial fashion. After I chose this speech, I highlighted and underlined the phrases, jokes and quotes that stood out to me visually. Those highlighted parts would eventually find various spots within the book. Some would just be weighted heavily, others would be pull quotes, and they would also inspire my choice of images.
"I would love it if you would come in and teach me how to really do you." -Maya Rudolph
Discovery was a major part of this process, more so than usual. I had to experiment a good amount in order to try and get the emotion/laughter I wanted from the book. The expressions between photographs as well as type needed to be manipulated to result in a giggle from the reader. Scaling type and editing images was a large part of my playing around when I started to begin thinking about spreads. When I came in with my first set of spreads, none of them really went together because they were all trying different things. Additionally, I was struggling with color. I wanted a darker tone and a lighter tone, each one a different hue to create a nice contrast. The darker tone would take up a majority of the book, but the lighter one would act as a nice break/highlight. As I went about making my first full book, I had to think about the flow of the book which I didn’t put a lot of consideration into when creating working spreads. I had to balance the fun I wanted to have with text and image with having enough breathing room for the reader so they wouldn’t be overwhelmed.
"I get anxious. That lovely Jewish guilt that comes with ancestry."
-Maya Rudolph
As I said before, as I started working on a complete book I had to start thinking about balance. Refinement came in creating a nice flow from one spread to another and in expressing what I wanted through scaled text and image. I also decided to change my colors because pink did not seem strong enough for Maya Rudolph. A dark red-orange contrasted with a light blue allowed to show both the powerful and sweet sides of Maya. Many spreads just needed a few iterations to get them right. I established a solid flow at some point and then built on it with every change I made. I played a lot with image placement in some spreads and text placement in other spreads. When I had larger text it became and image with helped with the flow. Also, visual language shifted throughout this process. Originally, there were subititles and pull quotes that were rotated 90 degrees, but once I changed the pull quotes to act differently, I abandoned that design and tested out new ideas. Unfortunatley, at one point I realized that I messed up with the number of spreads I had, which took some reconsideration on how things were organized.
"I really love laughing." -Maya Rudolph
There was one major critique throughout this entire process, also referred to as my Waterloo. This was how I handled Maya Rudolph’s final joke of the book: her own version of the National Anthem. It’s hilarious and has multiple layers and volumes. I wanted this to be a last bang for the book in order to end on a high. However, I struggled greatly when it came to actually manipulating it. First it was too subtle, then too crazy, then even crazier, then too simple again. In the book that was at the critique, I was close to where I wanted the spread to be, but it still needed more scale shift. Unfortunatley, I had more than one Waterloo. It was less of a concern than the other spread(s), but it still was an issue of concern even in the final product. I wanted to emphasize Maya’s list of things she did to prepare for this important speech by actually putting them into list form. However, no matter what I did, the text always read as an alien style of handling text rather than text as image, as it is in the rest of the book. The rest of the book, however, came together nicely. These two spreads still trouble me, but I hope to find a solution.