When you search up grotesque, some synonyms stand out. Odd, weird, freakish, ridiculous and surrealistic are some just to name a few. When thinking of these words, one story comes to mind. A story about a girl who falls down a hole and awakens in a world she’d never seen before or thought to imagine before. She is introduced to a world that can only exist in dreams and as the story progresses, nightmares. She wonders through a garden alone at first, but as the story progresses she gains both friends and enemies. The story, Alice In Wonderland, immediately reminded me of the typeface. Like in the mythical world of Wonderland, Monotype Grotesque is not an ordinary typeface. It has little quirks and oddities that make it in it’s own right, unique.
PLANNING:
To get to know the letter forms, a capital, a lowercase and a lowercase with a descender was traced and redrawn.Noted on the tracings were the Cap Height, Baseline and x-Height. Sets of the type were also printed out showing the full case set.
The cover design is made up completely out of type. The inspiration is the design of the back of a playing card as Alice In Wonderland dealt a lot with cards.
All text in the book came from the Alice In Wonderland Series. The illustrations are done by me. The concepts for the book came from different aspects of the story. Such as the Eat me and Drink Me pages which are inspired by what happens when Alice in the story drinks the potion and gets smaller and when she eats the pastry she gets bigger. The page with the text falling into the cup. It mimics Alice falling down the rabbit hole and into the tea party where she ends up. All quotes are iconic quotes from the book. The color scheme is inspired by Alice. Rather than just have it be red or purple which are the usual colors because of the Queen of Hearts or the Chesire cat, I instead chose more accent pops that are seen in the animated take on the book.
Final:
Photos:
“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”
-Lewis Carrol
Thank you for viewing!
