Science Fiction - Star*Crossed initial ideas

With the product for this research brief being a smaller component, acting as a culmination of this body of research and exploration of science fiction, there were a few ideas that were explored until one was settled upon; creating a science fiction poetry book that exists in the future when humans live on Mars. 

Cover - The idea behind this publication was that it would be double sided, half of it being representative of Earth, and having poems evocative of Earth, and the other half being evocative of Mars. For this reason, a fairly intuitive initial approach was using red and blue, to represent the red planet and the blue planet. The next step was finding typography to represent the two planets. Fonts such as Eckmannpsych (1) and Cheee (2) were experimented with for the Earth cover because they’re curved, fluid and more organic. Cheee in particular has letterforms which look very inflated and liquid, so this idea was pushed further by adding highlights to it, making it look a bit like bubble text. 

For the Mars cover, an initial exploration of science fiction typography led to the use of the fonts Muscle (3) and Amelia (4). The former being very geometric and similar to type used on sci-fi book covers, and the latter, Amelia, is a 60’s typeface which was used a lot for science fiction books covers. These 2 fonts did indeed have a sci-fi look to them, however they were a bit too retro and didn’t really have the right formality and rationality that would evoke a highly technologically advanced human society on Mars. For this reason, a slightly more efficient sans serif font ‘Tussilago’ (5) was picked, which is minimal and sleek, yet some of its letterforms such as A and S have slightly more unusual geometric forms. 

A big consideration for this publication was how the design of each side could be representative of either planet, but at the same time, there were still shared visual devices and components which would make the overall design identity of the book more cohesive. Using backgrounds for the covers was explored (5,6) in order to increase how representative they were of Earth and Mars, with a blue sky and a red rocky terrain. Ultimately however, a single colour background was a bit cleaner and more concise. One visual device which was used to make the two covers and sides of the book more cohesive was an asterisk. The title of the publication is Star-crossed, however the hyphen was replaced with an asterisk making it - Star*Crossed. Obviously an asterisk looks like a star, but more than that,  having one on either cover visually linked the two sides well, and the difference in the forms of the asterisks of different typefaces was really visually intriguing. It almost acts as a logo or visual signifier.

Inside Pages - Similar considerations were taken into account when designing the contents of the publication. For the Earth Poems (7,8), Montag, a rounded sans serif font was used for the headings so that it was readable, but a little more organic and human. The petal shapes of the asterisk in the Cheee font were were enlarged and utilised as a visual device which look like petals or pebbles and are reminiscent of nature. The approach to designing the Mars pages (9,10) was to make them look a bit more geometric and uniform; a circle was used as a very simple depiction of the planet, while asterisks were utilised in a neat row to represent stars. One really successful element of the designs at this point was this slightly more cohesive identity that was produced by the application of the asterisks throughout both sides of the publication.