Contagion ISTD
03 | Typography | IOW 400.4
Brief summary
For the 2020 ISTD project brief 2, The Significance of Numbers, we are tasked to develop a typographic interpretation of a set of self defined numbers that are not necessarily obvious and shine a new light on how this data of numbers intertwine with our lives and give narratives to our experiences. This typographical project uses the significance of numbers to inform an engaging experience around mathematics and how they inform the world around us. Research and investigation into philosophical and factual elements of number should enhance the significance further.
Since being in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it should be used as an element to inspire creative thoughts on how the world has been different this year. A broad range of creative methods and media are considered that explore and express the specific strengths in how you communicate a message. The tone of the communication is carefully considered; whether it is serious, humorous, observational or provocative.
Project deliverables
01. Journal and research
02. Strategy and specifications
03. Concept and design development
04. Final piece (in this instance an editorial piece)
05. Supporting images
Design strategy
With the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) rampaging across the globe, bringing what we previously associated with the ‘norm’ to a halt, many individuals in highly populated regions find themselves stuck at home in quarantine. And as anyone that has been left alone with their own thoughts can contest, the subconscious mind has a way of reigniting suppressed anxieties of one’s past, future, and of course one’s ultimate demise.
Disease in numbers, disease in its potential, death as a threat. Death as something that has crept into the back of our minds and has taken up residence. With fear & uncertainty at a fever pitch, its absolutely understandable that people would want to soothe themselves by pretending death isn’t real for them, when in actual fact, the risk of potential contagion is not something to disregard.
The project takes on the form of an editorial journal, each chapter introducing the audience to a more recent, and more deadly virus that has plagued the globe in the last century. With the exponential basic reproduction number and infection possibilities quite literally bleeding off of the pages, the project aims to inform and shock its audience into realising the severity of the situation:
Epidemics are becoming more frequent, and more deadly. Don't treat it as the next flu virus.
Process work & journaling
Other initial concepts included a tarot card deck that predicts your fortune during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a redesigned calendar system with only eleven months, after being in hard lockdown in South Africa, whereby virtually 'losing' a months worth of time.
Visual journaling explored possible solutions and idea generation.
All major epidemics that ravaged the world in the last century — starting with the Spanish influenza pandemic — were thoroughly researched and compared to find common overlapping factors. By directly juxtaposing two pandemics, the severity some of them harbour becomes morbidly clear.
Later visual journaling, when the theme was established explored ways of integrating type and image. Preliminary type as image explorations took inspiration from medieval plague depictions and Danse Macabre.
annotations & Specifications
The following sections are pages from a specifications document that annotates all design elements that was to be handed in along with the final piece.
Supporting Images
Cover and dust jacket that protects the spine of the journal. The front and back page shows a scene from the Spanish influenza in America and a COVID-19 hospital ward in Italy. Revealing eerie similarities between the two epidemics — almost exactly a century apart.
Each epidemic chapter has a fold out spread that indicated the amount of people that can potentially be infected after only ten rounds of infection spreading — this was calculated using the basic reproduction number and the incubation period. The basic reproduction number indicates how infectious a virus is hand how many people are likely to be infected by one ill individual with that disease. When the basic reproduction number increases the exponential infection rate increases shockingly. The number of cases start spreading and multiplying to a point where they reach up to millions.
