Fear and Loathing
The goal of this project was to take a book about a place during a specific point in time and recreate the first 38 pages in an editorial style layout. The design was to reflect the place, time-period, and content of the story. I chose Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a Hunter S. Thompson novel that takes place in Las Vegas during the 1970s, because of its chaotic and dreamlike journalistic writing style. In addition to the book, I designed a book cover, mobile ebook, calendar, and poster.
For some context, Hunter S. Thompson has an editorial style of writing and during the book he is writing an article for a motorcycle race in the desert. With this in mind in addition to the hallucinogenic and paranoid story of his experiences in Las Vegas, I chose to combine a contrast of orderly and traditional editorial style page layout with scattered aspects juxtaposing each other in style yet working together in controlled chaos.
Direction
Typography
The entirety of the book is designed using the typeface Georgia. I chose Georgia because it is easily legible at small scales and utilizes serifs to play into the editorial background of the story without being too rigid. Georgia relates to fonts used on typewriters and the era of the story but also is more friendly than other type options. The easy-going look of Georgia helps to reflect the go-with-the-flow events that occur throughout the novel.
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On the cover I added Avenir Next Condensed to work in contrast to Georgia. The two families work together to build the fragmented and expressive look of the cover against the clean interior spreads.
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Georgia Regular 16px​
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Georgia Bold 16px​
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz1234567890
Avenir Light 16px​
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz1234567890
#a03c3c
#ffc63b
#efa9cb
#91c5eb
#58595b
Color
Red is used on the cover, calendar, and poster to highlight the dark themes of this book reflected in drug use, paranoia, and lust that all facade as his interpretation of the ‘American dream’. Other highly saturated colors are included to showcase the diverse and vivid culture of the Vegas strip and its bright, dynamic neon lights.
Dated film images were gathered of places, people, and events to act as documentation of the author going through the events of the book. In addition, illustrations from the original book are included to add to the editorial documentation of writing notes mixed in with the foggy illustration of their endeavors. Scenes from the movie were also pulled in to help bring to life the feelings and experiences they went through during the creation of the story. At times, the layout fragments pictures to emphasize the state of mind in certain points of the book.
Photography
Book Cover
For the cover, I wanted to portray the iconic look of Hunter S. Thompson during this time period including his bucket hat and filtered cigarette. At the same time, I also wanted the front to be fragmented. I chose to not include his face in his depiction, just clothes, to show his loss of self through the madness during his bender. The title make up the space that would be his face and are made up of multiple fonts, weights, colors, and sizes, almost like a random not in a panic state. His name is written out in his cigarette further diving into the use of type as physical matter. Blood, smoke, and grime splatter across both sides of the cover to foreshadow the gritty events recalled throughout the text.
Calendar
With much of the story taking place in a car, I felt the calendar fitting to be based off of an old gasoline pump. The shape of the pump, historically accurate prices, and tedious metering used to indicate the days throughout the calendar year call back to the specific era of the occurring events. I reduced the dates to a small panel in a uncommon organization of time to play into the inconsistency of time and blacked out phases throughout their binging.
Poster
In effort to depict the dynamic and sometimes unpredictable path of the narrator or any night spent in Las Vegas, I started by creating an angular and irregular grid pulled from a picture of Las Vegas. Once a grid was drafted, I blocked out panels with a variety of contrasting and highly saturated colors. Lastly, I filled the space with the book title and quotes in multiple fonts at different scale, color, and weight.
