Year 2: 1st Project
This book is a chronological retelling of the events that lead to the Russian revolution and some of the consequences of the events. This book depicts the story of the revolution through the art of its time.
The title 'Rise of the Reds' comes from the Bolshevik rise to power and their nickname 'The Reds'.
Front Cover
For the front cover, I took inspiration from a more modern version of constructivism as I wanted to make the book feel modern. The book's art style changes as the book go on to match the time period of the event, as this book is a modern interpretation of the events I chose to base the cover to match today's times.
This picture shown on the left was one of my inspirations for my cover, I liked the effect it put on the photographic element and its use of straight and diagonal lines. With its minimal colour palette and heavy use of black, I decided to adopt these themes and tried to merge them with the other artists I use later.
For the final cover, I make the soviet star in the middle of a spotlight shining out into the sky and expanding over it resembling what the Soviets did with their ideology.
Industrial Revolution
For the industrial revolution page, I took inspiration from a Bauhaus artist called László Moholy-Nagy, I used the illustration idea from the cover as a modern anchor to a more old fashion design this part of the design, mixing the two together to keep a consistent design while also being able to experiment with different artists for the rest of the piece. The artwork I got inspired by looked like an explosion and the industrial revolution was an explosion of innovations and ideas so I took that element and added a person who was able to successfully monopolize some of the growing industries.
My original design was based on the work of the Stenberg brothers, I really enjoyed the way they used negative space in the illustration to make a face without colouring it all in, when I first saw it it reminded me of a gene so I tried to work with that idea. I used the smoke from the factories to build the base colour and have his facial features shine through, I never ended up refining the design because the idea was fundamentally flawed as the illustration did not match anything else I had planned for the book and just stood out, in the end, I settled on the Bauhaus idea.
Karl Marx
For this page, I broke my rule of a 50/50 split page and wanted the typography to be the center stage as it would put an emphasis on the title of the page 'The fall of capitalism is certain'. Karl Marx's ideology was the backbone of the communist revolution in Europe and his words were more important than himself in history so I wanted to indirectly convey that on the page. I made Karl Marx smaller and less important and contrasted it with large text emphasizing the importance of the words.
The inspiration for the way I laid out the typography was from Piet Mondrian. The text is laid out in a box grid pattern as Piet lays out the colour boxes but I chose to replace them with text.
My original idea was to use real photographic elements but to keep a consistent language I chose to change it to a posterized effect. Even in the earlier designs, I've made an emphasis to make the title impactful using bold text or contrasting colours to make certain words stand out from the rest.
Vladimir Lenin
This page wasn't too complicated as I used another of László Moholy-Nagy's work and reimagined it to fit in a big illustration of Lenin. I went back to my rule of the 50/50 page as this page isn't about what Lenin did or something he said but it's about him, Lenin was such an influential figure in history that others, not one thing he said or done that is important but more so the combinations of them both. His face and name were so synonymous with the political turmoil of the 1920s that having them there as the main feature tells the story in itself.
Originally I wanted a more dynamic pose like what I used for the front cover but I thought it looked better as a cover and kept a more grounded portrait for the Lenin page. I was playing around with different colour palettes as I didn't know at the time if I wanted to go with more vibrant colors or more muted tones. I chose the muted colours as it gave it a vintage feel and with textures on top of the beige it made it look like old worn and stained paper, I liked the aesthetic so I kept the colour pallette of black, white, muted red, and beige.
WW1
This page is inspired by the work of Alexander Rodchenko for the way he uses shapes as speech bubbles extending into the layout of the page. I wanted to make a double spread page to separate the two halves of my book as they each told slightly different stories through the art and I wanted to make sure the reader understood that this page depicts an important event even if they didn't know what ww1 was. I used Gavrilo Princip shouting as the main theme of the page as it mirrors what he did in real life, he committed an act of terror to get his message heard by others.
For my first couple of designs, I tried to keep more of a more modern constructivism look as I wanted more angular designs for this page but the idea quickly fell apart as it didn't fit the theme of ww1 well. I tried to tweak the tanks to look better and spent a lot of time making readjustments as I thought I wanted to go with a design like these but in the end, I settled speech design.
Russian Revolution
From this page onwards I chose to go with a more modern style of design, I took some inspiration from early Popart work as I started using the dithering pattern more often in conjunction with a more comedic tone to the designs. The reason I chose to go down this route is that it mirrors real life and as the world wars happened the art movements evolved to be less realistic and more expressionist, people started to make fun of their situation as the reality usually was quite grim. I liked the arrow pointing design so I took and used it to point out the obvious and to also tell the reader that this is an emperor. I tried to work in the 'Pow!' 'Wow!' symbols but i scrapped it because it felt out of too out of place.
Red Revolution
For this page, I kept with the comedic tone as per the slightly changed theme post ww1. In this illustration it shows Nikolai Yudenich getting shot through the head, I used the grid lines as part of the bullet travel, so it could fit in the design and so the bullet doesn't get lost in the image and so you can tell what it is. The rest is quite simple as I took more inspiration from László Moholy-Nagy using the shapes to build a visually pleasing background, In one of the shapes it says 'Objective: Don't Die' which again is an obvious statement but the white army were defeated quite swiftly and in hindsight it seems more that they were trying to survive against the reds not as much trying to fight back.
I tried to use Trotski, who was one more prominent of the generals who fought with the bolsheviks against the whites.
Joseph Stalin
For the last page, I went with a similar design to the Lenin page with the circle and the grid lines intersecting the circle as it serves the same purpose just for a different person, only on this page the more pop art influence is visible. Gustav klutsis, like Rodchenko, uses stylized speech bubbles, I enjoyed the way he made the text shoot outside the bubble. I tried to implement the shooting out of the text in my work but I didn't want to do the speech bubble so I made it on top of the circles, this can be interpreted as a crown showing Stalin's rein was like a monarch or like the planet read to fire nukes, showing off what the cold war would be later on.
One of my earlier designs was using Sophie Taeuber-Arp design trying to show the world burning and Stalin laughing at it, it didn't really turn out good and the globe looked really badly made so i just scrapped the idea and restarted with a fresh canvas.