The Evolution of the Project

The project has not evolved all that much. I started off with a really strong idea of what I wanted to do and have pretty much followed through on that. Truthfully looking through my half a million blog posts will probably give one a better idea of this project's evolution than a single post, but I will do my best to summarize.

The Evolution of the Concept:
Originally I had planned on doing simply a modernized version of the original. I was going to simply rewrite the stories in modern English and juxtapose them with illustrative photos. I then had ideas about fragmented poetry in English and German. Which led me to the idea of using no body copy, simply titles. Eventually, once I started using myself as a model in the photos I decided to personalize the book even more and write myself into the stories.

The Evolution of the Visuals:
The color scheme went through quite a few changes. From black and white, to black, white and red. Then to various shades of blue. Then I went with Sepia. Finally, I added some color to compliment the sepia.

The photos never went through any physical evolution (except color-wise). The minute I started to work on them they came together really nicely. Originally though I had some other ideas for how to do them. I had considered making photos extremely cropped and abstract. I had thought of showing only hands in all my photos. I had also considered using other people as models. As I mentioned before, I am really happy with the direction I ended up taking.

The layout is still undergoing change. I have played around with many different types of layouts and am not positive of the final design. I have made one decision though. Originally I had wanted to have all text pages laid out the same way. I have since decided to treat each page differently according to length of text, whether they are a verso or recto page, and what photo they are juxtaposed with. What will not change is fonts.


Check out the evolution: