Making Choices

Font Choices
Immediately when I decided on my project direction I knew I had to use blackletter. I completely adore it and would love to use it all day everyday, it just isn't practical. While this is my big opportunity to finally take advantage of this beautiful form of writing I had to choose the perfect typeface. After looking at almost every version of blackletter under the sun and still not coming up with a decision, I decided to stay true to the original book and use the font from the cover. The problem was, even after looking through about 350 different versions of blackletter I couldn't find that exact one! The closest I found was Lichte Weiss-Fraktur. Truthfully it was almost an exact match. The issue with that was while I saw the font printed in a book (Fraktur Mon Amour) I couldn't find anywhere I could download it (for free or money). The closest I found was Weiss-Fraktur. The letter shapes are the same, the difference is the Lichte version is one of the two-toned fonts.

I knew right away that for readability sake I would have to throw in some non-blackletter as well. Even the original only uses blackletter on the cover. I decided I would make all German in blackletter and all English in a sans-serif. I figured that once I was using the same blackletter font the original used, I would use the same sans serif as well. Hence, my decision to use Futura. As Futura was designed in the 1920's I am pretty sure my book is not a first edition...

Photography Choices
I always knew my photographs needed to have a really creepy but still modern feel. This wasn't to hard to achieve with the macabre content and modern props and scenery. The hard part was choosing a color scheme that married modernity with old school fear. I think the sepia manages to do that quite well.

Another choice I had to make was how to go about producing these photos. Originally I had intended on shooting other people but I really didn't want to bother with a model release. I could have other people photograph me, but I wanted the photos to be mine. In the end I got out my tripod and photographed myself! What started off as simply a convenience ended up as a new direction for my whole project. I am really happy with the results. As this project was very personal to begin with I liked how I was able to take that aspect to the max. It is also just really cool to have a piece that you were involved in in such a complete way.


This spread is characteristic of my typography and photography choices throughout the book: