The Summer I Met Him
Typographic Memory Book
Our professor tasked us to create a memory book outlining a memory of out choosing. Being that I love
to put my personal emotions into my work, I chose to create a book surrounding a traumatic event that I had gone through when I was on a journey of finding out who I was outside of my ex-boyfriend.
The Project
We had to come up with a set of rules to outline our memory in order to conceptualize our story. My rules were aimed at creating a sensory experience for the reader, making the book hard to read at times because it’s a hard story for me to tell. The following is a result of my application.
The Idea
My first set of rules were more about the construction of the book itself. I made the book the size of my iPhone X, to represent the fact that a lot of this memory transpired over text. In addition, I bound the book using a sewn binding technique to keep the spine of the book exposed. This was to represent how exposing this story was for me and how exposing it is to read this memory.
The Size & Binding
The inclusion of the perforated pages was meant to represent a couple of different things. For one, many of the conversations I had with this person occurred over Snapchat, a social media platform meant to only hold chats for a temporary amount of time. Once 24 hours passes the message or picture disappears. The tearing out of these inserts was meant to represent that concept. In addition, the small, torn piece that was left behind as a result of the tearing is meant to represent the idea that memories can leave a scar behind, no matter how temporary it may be.
The Perforated Pages
The Repeating Pronouns
The repeating pronouns he/him/his goes from a light opacity to a full black throughout the book. This is representational of the way that this person over took
me both physically and mentally. At some points, the text becomes so overwhelmed with these pronouns that it makes the text hard to read, because the story is hard for me to tell. This is meant to showcase how this person overtook my life for a short period of time during The Summer I Met Him.
I wanted to showcase that you are not your past.
No matter what scars you may have or who gave them to you, your past or who was in your past does not define you. Light always over comes the darkness in the end. You will be okay.