A
ve ro ld Print Production Portfolio 2014
ANNAR VEROLD Annar Verold is a writer, musician and student living in Austin, Texas. She’s currently at a crossroads, so any other identifying factors may be regrettable. Oh, and she has a dog. And he looks like this:
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w w w . a n n a r v e r o l d . c o m
ABOUT THIS BOOK I
have been taking a wonderful course titled “Print Production” with Professor Beth Eakman for the Fall semester of 2014. Initially, I was terrified and intimidated. My experience with Indesign was nonexistant, and despite being an ambitious person, I wasn’t too familiar with what to expect. Professor Eakman prepared me and introduced me to various tools for design in addition to the Adobe Suites. Quickly, I learned how to pair fonts; which colors work with each other and why; all I’d ever need to know about “information hierarchy;” how to design flyers, menus, my brand and lastly, this book. This has been an exciting adventure. Perhaps the most beautiful thing about this book is the growth it has displayed. Especially for the first few projects, my modest attempts are evident as I take the smallest steps towards creating a document. The book is divided into sections, such as the course was. The page numbers can be identified in the following page. I hope you enjoy, this has been a pleasure.
Contents
Poetry broadside page 24
5
Sales Document Redesign page 14
Advertisement redesign page 10
2 Flyer Redesign page 6
1
3
Branding projecT page 18
4
Page layout design page 28
6
SECTION 1
6
Flyer Redesign
FLYER REDESIGN
Featuring Young Marine’s Sock-Hop T
to look back to. Version number one (featured on the left) was
my first document in Print Production. I had just completed my
first Indesign workshop and was really beginning to explore the possibilities of design. I was excited, but really anxious that my imagination was more ambitious than my actual skills. Version one is beloved to me simply because it showcases the starting
point of this course and is great for comparing my progress and growth from August until December 2014.
My final version was completed in November 2014. As you
can see from my inspiration board on page six, I was inspired by baby blues and hot pinks, the 1950s, checkered dance floors, and the type titled “Marcelle Script.”
The document is significantly more organized than Version
One. I focused on the importance of information hierarchy. I also removed unneccessary information. The purpose of a flyer is to catch the attention of a passerby, and that was an important idea I needed to retell myself while working on Version Two.
I used the colors of white, baby blue, hot pink and grey
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his document is perhaps one of the more exciting ones
throughout the document. After researching the 1950s, I discovered that this was a common color scheme, and I figured that it would relay the theme successfully, especially for someone passing by. Version Two features a black and white checkered border to embellish the document. The main type is “Marcelle Script” and “Brannboll Fet”, courtesy of DaFont.com. Information “Sock-Hop” is written larger and in a hotter color than most of the other text, to attract initial attention. The information “Young Marines Presents...” is written in a cooler color, in a smaller font and placed above “Sock-Hop” to provide the audience more information. Other information that is important, but not as important as the “What” is written in a complimentary grey script and placed below the vectors towards the bottom of the page. Lastly, in a matching blue, price--which after the when and where, is the final thing the audience would be curious about--is placed at the bottom of the page.
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Version Number One * Version Number Two Young Marines Presents A 1950’s-Styled Sock Hop Saturday September 6th 7 p.m. - 11 p.m. Onion Creek Senior Citizen’s Center
Entertainer R. M. Bateman Karaoke Competition
21+ B.Y.O.B
D. J. Mike Castro Costume Contest
$5 in advance $7 at the door
Event proceeds go to a fine youth organization dedicated to drug demand reduction and strengthening of boys and girls in the Austin area.
To purchase tickets in advance email: batemans@att.net or call 512-800-1686 Onion Creek Senior Citizen’s Center is located at: 420 Bartons Crossing, Buda, Texas
Drinks*Live Music*Raffles
Young Marines Presents a
Sock-Hop0
8
Saturday September 6 th 7 p.m Onion Creek Senior’s Center
$7 at the door
SECTION 2
10
Advertisement Redesign
ADVERTISEMENT REDESIGN Featuring “Frank and Angie’s”
I
discovered my bad sales ad while flipping through the Austin Chronicle. I became particularly attached to this business, because it is a humble, local business that has been in the same spot downtown for a long time. Seeing their advertisement, I can’t imagine that their clientele suits the neighborhood they are located within, so I decided to give the company a little bit of a boost. Given their location downtown, I imagine that Frank and Angie’s caters to young, trendy Austinites. In addition, Frank and Angie’s take pride in their artisan bread and fine ingredients. I wanted to appeal to their local audience and convey fresh, artisan foods and a modern style using the layout of the document, color,and type. Showcased on the left side of the following page is Version One of my design. Initially, I searched Kuler words like “pizza”, “pizzeria”, “Italy” and “artisan”. Though my skills in Indesign were still very fresh, I attempted to create an “artisanal feel” for my document. I discovered a soft yellow for the border and a deep, burgundy red for my fonts. To play with the idea of pizza in my fonts, I outlined a couple of lines with a subtle yellow to help the
words pop from the background. The background that I chose is a really simple pattern that conveys ingredients that would often be found in a pizza shop. For my fonts, I used a decorative font for the business name that reminded me of carnivals and pizza. The font for the rest of the document is a script font that compliments the colors and the background image. I decided for Version Two of this document that modern and artisanal can also be incredibly minimal and still make an eye-catching and bold statement. For my second design, I used a chalky background and placed a white image of a wooden pan. Inside of the pan, using fonts “Marcelle Font” and “Roboto - Thin”, I illustrated the name of the pizzeria contrasted by their motto “Superior Pizza Served with Panache.” I practiced kearning with their motto and made the first line “Superior Pizza” slightly larger than the second line “Served with Panache” to grab the audience attention. All in all, this project taught me that often times, less is much, much more. - AV
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Version Number One * Version Number Two Frank and Angie’s Pizzeria
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Frank &Angie's Superior pizza served with panache Monday - Friday: 11am - 10pm Saturday: 12pm - 10pm Sunday: 5pm-10pm
508 West Avenue
512-472-3534
HutsFrankAndAngies.com
SUPERIOR PIZZA
SERVED WITH PANACHE mon-fri: 11am - 10pm saturday: 12pm - 10pm sunday: 5pm - 10pm
HutsFrankAndAngies.com HutsFrankAndAngies.com
SECTION 3
14
Sales Document Redesign
SALES DOCUMENT REDESIGN Featuring “East Side King”
I
began my project with researching the restaurant whose menu I decided to redesign. East Side King is an urban, Asian restaurant. The inside of the building or the outside of their food trailers are decorated by a Japanese artist named Peelander Zee—so the restaurant is full of tons of hot colors and monsters. I also realized that their menu is relatively small compared to other restaurants, but the original design was overwhelming, disorganized and poorly reflected the environment. To begin, I pulled a couple of images from their website and created a background/border image reflecting their hot colors and urban designs. On top of that image, I placed a white box so that it rises above the border and would make the menu legible and main focus. Given the colors of the background, I did not want to add too much color and distract from the content of the menu, keeping the font colors a simple black on a white background and focusing more on font types. My initial instinct was to design a minimalist type of menu, however, after discovering the large descriptions, I realized that I would have to include the ingredients because of the
unfamiliar foods on the menu. Instead, I played with type font and size to help organize the information. At the top of the menu I placed the name of the restaurant in a weighted, urban font. The items on the menu are listed in a bold, sans-serif font. Beside that, the price of the item is listed in the same font, unbolded and in a smaller size; the purpose of a smaller font size and unbolded font for the pricing is because given the atmosphere of the restaurant and food trailers, the prices for the food are a little pricey, so I decided to subdue the price. Beneath the item is the description. The description is italicized in a fifteen degree angle, unbolded and a smaller size than the name of the menu item; this was done to make it easier to identify the menu items without being overwhelmed by the descriptions. To the document, I also added a few lines to organize the document and fill in the white space. This technique was inspired by the “Holly Burger” menu design. -AV
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East Side King East Side King Classics THAI CHICKEN KARA-AGE $8
Deep Fried-Chicken thigh, sweet and spicy sauce, basil, cilantro, mint, onion, jalapeno TORI MESHI $8 Thai chicken kara-age and liberty rice VEGGIE MESHI $7 Brussels sprout salad and liberty rice
Ramen
SAPPORO BEER MISO RAMEN $9
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Chicken and pork dashi, white miso base, kikurage mushroom, chashu pork, green onion, bean sprouts, spicy bamboo shoots, beni shoga, Sapporo beer foam CHICKEN TORTILLA RAMEN $9 Chicken and pork dashi, Tom-Yum base, braised chicken thigh, dried shrimp, avocado, blue corn tortilla strips, pickled yellow onion, jalapeno KIMCHI PORK RAMEN $9 Chicken and pork dashi, braised pork, fried tofu crouton, cabbage kimchi, chinese leeks, pickled radish, pickled napa cabbage, bean sprouts
East Side King Sides POOR QUI’S BUNS $7
Two pieces of roasted pork belly in steamed bun, hoissin sauce, cucumber kimchi, green onion LIBERTY RICE $4 Steamed jasmine rice, ginger, garlic oil, basil, cilantro, mint, onion, jalapeno BEET HOME FRIES $7 Deep-fried roasted beets, kewpie mayo, shichimi, togarashi, green onion YOSHI MART CURRY BUNS $8 Tofu, golden curry, carrot, bell bepper, ginger, celery, julienned fried potatoes
Beverages SOFT DRINKS $2.50 GREEN TEA $3
RAMUNE $3 ICED COFFEE $3
SECTION 4
18
Branding Project
BRANDING PROJECT I
began this assignment by deciding what my brand would be. I aspire to be a successful magazine journalist for magazines similar to “The Paris Review” or “The Atlantic.” I thought very hard about how I desire to appear to the public eye professionally, how these magazines appear to the public, and how I would be able to convey that with type and color. Finding my type was fairly simple; deciding upon which fonts, however, was difficult. I searched DaFont.com for serif fonts, because I felt like it appears to be more professional and timeless and matches the style of the prestigious magazines I admire. I did a little more digging and searched for terms like “magazines,” and eventually discovered my header font: “Voor.” The second type that I used is “Fine Style,” and the third type that I used is “Oraniumbaum,” for my main text. Below is a preview of my fonts:
“timeless,” and “academic.” I came across dark blues and goldbrowns, and I decided to pair them with a creme color and dark gray--below is a preview of my swatch.
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VOOR/FINESTYLE/Oranienbaum Choosing the color for my brand was an excellent adventure. I searched the terms “journalist” and “writer” in Adobe Kuler, coming across a lot of gray, white, and black. I wanted to convey a timeless brand, but decided to reach beyond the typical newspaper colors, so I explored colors associated with “elegant,”
RGB: 17 25 27
RGB: 1 40 64
RGB: 1 52 64
RGB: 217 209 186 RGB: 89 59 2
While working on this project, it was important to evaluate my goals as a journalist. Slowly, I began to realize what kind of audience I enjoy writing for, what kind of work I love to read, and what kind of questions I adore finding answers to. I realized that my goals included engaging with my audience through multiple media platforms; creating content with breakthrough insights into politics, business, arts, and culture; being a source of opinion, commentary, and analysis; and lastly, I want to write for individuals that seek to be challenged, informed and entertained. While designing my logo, I wanted something clean that could attach to my letterhead. I created a circle and filled it with a creme color (RGB 217 209 186), added a slanted dash border,
downloaded a vector of a typewriter from thenounproject.com, fitted the typewriter, and added my initials in Voor type in the center of the typewriter page. For my letterhead, I decreased the logo’s transparency to not distract from the content of the document or invoice. Below is a small-scaled preview of my logo:
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I would like my brand to feature recycled cardstock. Being in the world of printing and print production doesn’t mean we have to leave a massive carbon footprint, and that is an idea that is very valuable to me. Lastly, for my extensions, I decided to create stickers. I really love the design I did for this and used the set of colors to pull the brand together. I would also love to design items such as pens and notebooks to inspire journalists and writers to produce the type of writing my brand represents.
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Sticker Samples
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Business Card Front Side
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A N N A R VEROLD
journalist
Business Card Back Side
{P}(512) 963-2937 {E } annarverold@gmail.com {A}401 Little Texas Lane {Austin, Texas}
A
A
verold
verold
INVOICE October 24th, 2014 Contact Company Name Company Address
Description
Words
Article Title One
1,000
Article Title Two
1,500
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Price
Amount
300.00
300.00
450.00
450.00
Subtotal Discount
750.00 0.00
TOTAL
750.00
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Due Date: November 1st, 2014 Please make checks payable to Annar Verold Please remit to: [Business Address], [City], [Postcode] Electronic Payments: [Bank Name], Account: [12345], Sort Code: [XX-XX-XX]
401 Little Texas Lane annarverold@gmail.com 512-963-2937 Invoice No. 1234
Branding Project Invoice
401 Little Texas Lane annarverold@gmail.com 512-963-2937
Branding Project Letterhead
SECTION 5
24
Po e t r y Broadsides
POETRY BROADSIDE
Featuring Rainer Marie Rilke F
or my assignment, I decided to use an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “First Elegy” of the Duino Elegies. Rilke is such a talented poet from the modernist period, and I wanted to create a broadside featuring a few of his lines. The poem evokes a dreamy, enlightened, haunting emotion and I wanted to attempt to capture that and translate it into design using color and type. The poem features the stanzas, “ to get whiffs--of eternity”, which made me decide to do an image of space from earth in my project. Rilke’s work explores the concept of heaven and grazes metaphysical ideas, so I found the image I chose to be appropriate. I chose this image based on the wonderful range of colors that is captured. I also love that the silhouette of the trees is captured at the bottom of the page, which grounds the image--that reminds me of Rilke’s style: airy and fluid and dreamy, but still present and human. The poem is written in William Carlos Williams triads-though this is the translator’s decision, I personally believe this is the most excellent way of capturing this collection of poems. In the spirit of the triad, I decided to cut the excerpt into three
sections--giving the document more flow as it descends towards the bottom of the page. I decided to use a serif type for the body of the document-I felt that this helped capture the elegance of Rilke’s style while anchoring the text, keeping it from getting lost in the background. The color of the type that I decided to use was white with a black border--this helped establish the font, also keeping it from getting lost among the other colors of the document. Any other color would have either clashed with the image or made the text more difficult to read. For the poet’s name, I decided to place it on the bottom of the page among the black tree silhouette to let it pop. I used a serif font named Voor (I am obsessed), and reused the orange color from the image to tie it all together. Below the author’s name, I used a sans serif font in white to let the audience know where this excerpt is coming from. I tracked the name of the author and the title of the collection to have a widening effect--linking it with the space theme. - AV
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Strange
to see things that seemed to belong together floating in every direction.
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It’s very hard to be dead and you try to make up for lost time till you slowly start to get whiffs of eternity.
But the living are wrong in the sharp distinctions they make.
R I L K E DUINO ELEGIES
SECTION 6
28
Pa g e L a y o u t Design
PAGE LAYOUT DESIGN Featuring George Orwell
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or my page layout design, I wanted to do something cohesive with my branding project. I used many of the same type fonts that I had carefully selected in the previous project. The theme I am attempting to achieve is the theme of a literary magazine. Think a classic Harper’s Bazaar or New Yorker.
For pages 2 and 4, I created a large transparent page number using “Voor”. The transparency is at 20%, however, I believe given the type of card stock I decided to use, it appears to be more faint that I intended. To break up some of the text on page 3, I decided to add a
For the layout, I decided to do a two columns for the text. My first page I introduced the title of the document with the “Voor” type. I capitalized and tracked the word “Elephant” to expand past the line above it to have more of an effect. Below, I used the type “Fine Style” for the name of the author. I created a rule below the title and the author’s name to seperate the content. The name of the author and document title are bolder and larger than the actual text to emphasize information hierarchy. For my first paragraph I used a dropcap to emphasize the beginning of the document. I also added a sink to the document to give space between the title and author name. The font I decided to use is a serif-font, that makes the blocks of text appear more elegant and easier to read.
block quote that was an essential statement in the short story. I made the font larger and gave it plenty of space to breathe among the other text. Lastly, I created a rule below the document to have a continuing element across all four pages. This project really opened my eyes to the time and energy applied to print production of literary magazines. - AV
Shooting An ELEPHANT By George Orwell
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n Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans. All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces
of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any AngloIndian official, if you can catch him off duty. One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what
I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old 44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone “must.” It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of “must” is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.
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have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast’s foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend’s house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant.
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he Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant. I had almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of “Go away, child! Go away this instant!” and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man’s dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not
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The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant – I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary – and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd’s approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth. I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot
him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of “must” was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home. But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothesfaces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my
heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.
But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast’s owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experiencedlooking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.
But I did not want to shoot the elephant.
It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of “natives”; and so, in general, he isn’t frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do. There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a
the
end