This was our semester long project in Graphic Design III, exploring the topic of gentrification in the East Austin Cesar Chavez neighborhood. Our assignment was to pick a subject matter, dealing with the gentrification issue prevailing in this neighborhood, and represent it through a book.
I’ve always loved creative writing, so I decided to make a children’s story depicting the evolving gentrification issue in the neighborhood. This was both my strong suit and my weakness for this project. I focused a lot on my story. Writing a story from scratch and wanting it to send a strong message perhaps didn’t allow me as much time to focus on design elements.
For the images in my book, I decided to depict the gentrification elements of both new and old influence by using both a new and old design activity, one being from the computer and one by hand. The images were sketched out on illustrator based off the images I took visiting the location, but I also knew I wanted to incorporate the rich color and culture of the old buildings and houses so I decided to watercolor the illustrator files by hand and then scan them in.
Although I focused a lot on the content of my book I also learned a lot about design during this process. I became more familar with creating a successful layout, especially for a children’s book, a format I hadn’t previously designed for. I learned about making cohesion throughout the course of my book, but also making it varied enough that my audience won’t get bored. I learned about paper and printing, as well as using signatures. I was forced to book bind. Book binding was certainly not my strong suit, and I think with more time I could’ve made my overall craft stronger, but given the limited time and focus on content I was happy with the end result.