I started with the spread about 'Secret Societies and The Lizard Men' because I had a really strong idea of what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to put lizard eyes of Barack Obama's eyes in spot varnish and then put an Illuminati symbol on his forehead, I thought that this would be quite a nice way to tie the content of the book and the spot varnish elements together on this page:
I thought that this worked OK, but its a very similar concept to the cover and I don't want te book to feel like it's playing the same symbols over and over again.
Despite this I tried puttingin a circle shape to mimic an iris to see how it would look, It looks eve worse, I think the heaviness of the filled in circles overpowers the linework of the rest of the symbol.
I then decided to look at an upside down pentagram. The theories about the secret societies are often doomsday theories from extreme christian thinking, so the idea that Obama might be the Antichrist seems appropriate. I also quite like the shock factor of sticking a pentagram on Obama who is quite a popular political figure over here.
I started working with some type, using Dave's 'extralight' version of his theory typeface. I started writing text that had enough words to mimic the way the type is laid out in the normal content, with the same line spacing and point size also. I started with the phrase 'THEY rule the world' but I wanted to highlight the most absurd of the theories as the truth so I changed it to 'REPTILES rule the worlds.' Then I put it into the document just to check everything lined up properly and also to simulate how it might lok as a spot varnsih byt reducing the opacity of the overlays to around 20%. At this point with all of them it allowed me to assess whether this idea was gong to work or not, thankfully, I feel that on this layout I'd come up with something really strong quite early. I could move on and work quickly.
The next layout I decided to work on was the 'Little Green Men' spread about aliens. It was another one that I had a strong idea about. I was inspired by this image:
It was supposedly given to renound crackpot/UFOlogist George Adamski by an alien in 1952, and he superimposed it onto his own photograph of a UFO. I figured that this image would be a nice collection of appropriate an odd symbols that would look quite effective, so I decided to recreate this ready to stick on the UFO picture I'd gotten from Jonny's books.
I simply drew the symbols out and scanned them in, ready to go. I turned them into illustrator files so I could increase the size if needs be and I started reconstructing the image in Indesign:
I started with the symbols I'd scanned and then used the normal layout as a guide to start bulding the symbols up around it. I put in the unusual swastika style shape central to the UFO craft in the Adamski image, but it looked a bit out on it's own.
I added some symbols around the swastika using unusual Sanskrit and symbol type families. This seemed to narrow the gap between styles of the symbols and the swastika thing. I also added some more symbols by copying th eorginals, flipping them upside down and delting half of them to fill out the page a little better.
I tried putting an oval round the UFO to mimic the Adamski image but it looked to smooth and didn't really suit the chaotic appearance of the symbols at all to well, so I decided to remove that.
I then added some circles to create a little bit of symmetry and also mimic an alternate version of adamski's drawing (not shown) where the symbols outside of the craft have become circular blotches. I felt that this worked because it balanced the darkness of the handles on the swastika type symbol.
I then quickly did the type, ensuring that it was the same point size and line spacing as the title on the page in the printed document so there would be a symmetry between the two. I chose the phrase 'Aliens walk among us' because it's one phrase that seems to permeate the culture revolving around this kind of conspiracy thinking. It's also a nice bold statement that works well with the concept of the spot varnish elements revealing the truth secretly, whilst the balanced view of the regular print is in fact false.
Here it is against
I followed this up with responding to the moon landing hoax page in a similarly quick fashion. Looking at the ciruclar image of the moon, I knew I had to do something that responded to that shape. I tried to lay out text that would lie within it, and again I went for a bold statement that kind of flies in the face of what we understand as established fact. This was in order to keep with the concept of the spot varnish telling truth, whilst the body copy of the booklet would give a balanced view that is actually lies.
I changed 'we' to man because 'we' makes the book or the author feel part of humanity, where as I'd rather it be completely detached. The statement feels more truthful if it is presented as unbiased fact, the 'we' makes it feel a little too personal for this.
Here is the text in context, I made it orange for the purposes of showing where it sits, and then I put it into 20% opacity to preview the spot varnish, but it's very difficult to view the black on dark blue anyway, so it might be difficult to see on the image.
I didn't do too much more with this, it isn't relay as based in symbology as the other conspiracies, they're about arms races and the government rather than aliens or secret societies. I thought I'd let the strength of those words speak for themselves.
For the Assassination and death section, I started with the phrase 'they are after you', I wanted to play on the paranoia that a lot of conspiracy theorists feel. I worked with this in a similar way as to before, making sure the type lined up with the type on the regularly printed page. I put in a symbol for a target, because I thought that this summised the themes of the spread very well. I also then decided to change the phrase to 'they knew too much' making a bold statement but less aggressive and directed at the reader.
Final overlayed on the document, 8% opacity, mimicking it's appearance as a spot varnish.
It's in the water:
I had the deadline dramatically encroaching at this point so I blitzed this last one out, trying to make sure I could have these done in time for deadline. I'm ashamed to say I used a phrase that came to my head quite quickly a long with a recogniseable symbol for water. I made sure that these were contained within the frame of the image on the main document, and that was it. This is not best practice and I'm realising now that I haven't been using my time efficiently if it's coming to a rough job at the end. I wanted these sport varnish elements to be well considered, and with some of them, they are quite well considered, but I feel like there's an inconsistency there, thankfully because it's a unique finish, the strength of the overall concept is probably enough to hide these.
Ultimately the issue here again is that I've gone on making decisions without recording them thoroughly and now the record is fragmented and not an accurate representation of what I tired and how many different ways I approached this book. I also did this over reading week on my own with an infant. I didn't really have many people's opinions to ask, so I feel like this half of the project has become quite insular. There's not much I can do about this with the deadline for getting this printed in time for the book fair looming.
Proactive things to do about above problem:
-I need to begin thoroughly planning my time,my work for this project has begun to suffer because I'm not planning out what I need to do and giving myself appropriate timescales.
-After this project is put to bed, I need to ensure that the rest of the projects in this module are more thoroughly documented, I'm going to lose marks on this brief because of it and I need to ensure that the rest of my briefs are better documented in order to limit the damage.
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