20000 Leagues Under The Sea - University FMP
20000 Leagues Under The Sea - For my final major project of university I decided to redesign the classic book by Jules Verne. After reading the book and planning a variety of different concepts I could explore, I went with the theme of freedom and confinement.
Throughout the book the main character Aronnax has constantly changing feelings of freedom and confinement. It is this which I wanted to portray through the typesetting and layout of the book. Aronnax (a doctor turned scientist) is often experiencing high levels of freedom (despite being a prisoner) when he is discovering new species of marine life on his adventure. I represented this feeling of freedom through allowing the type on these pages to have a lot of space and the chapter titles to be set 'freely' on the page without any constriction from guides. I included half pages as you read through the book documenting his findings of new marine life and adding images (where possible) to give the reader a sense of the excitement and freedom Aronnax is feeling.
To contrast this when Aronnax is feeling an overwhelming sense of confinement and remembers he is actually a prisoner on board a submarine, the type on the pages is extremely confined and has very little space to breath. The pages are white text on a black background to represent the great depth and darkness he is surrounded by, along with the chapter headers appearing to 'disappear' into the 'darkness'.
The physical book was hard bound with all the half pages having to be hand cut personally by me with a craft knife to ensure a high quality and perfect size. The cover of the book was debossed using a metal plate and coloured in white paint to again represent his feelings of confinement and sinking into darkness. Finally the contents page of the book shows specifically what chapters he is feeling most free or confined. The images below show the finished book.
