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project brief
Assuming the role of curator, the student will as-
semble (and create) a series of historic artifacts.
The eras are predetermined and may range from
the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Next, a
written narrative will be developed that briefl y
introduces a central protagonist in a story. He or
she comes alive through the prose as well as the
evidence left behind from the printed ephemera.
The documentation includes journals, billheads,
personal artifacts, photographs, studies, maps,
letters, and invitations. Once the initial artifacts
are completed, all of these elements and docu-
ments will be designed into a twenty-two-page
handmade, hardbound book. This book must be
appropriately choreographed to the written nar-
rative and consistent with the character’s story.
The telling of this historical fi ction raises ques-
tions about representation as well as truth and
the designer’s power and responsibility with in-
formation. The student must assume three iden-
tities in this project: those of the hero, the curator,
and the designer.
project goal
This layered novel will also function as a portfo-
lio showcasing all the design basics. Taking in-
spiration from Renaissance paintings, students
will do a series of “master” copies or studies. By
exploring historic design through re-creating pe-
riod artifacts (down to the aged look), the class
will address aesthetics and the relationship to
technology and culture. The main purpose of this
course is to study typography and design history
as it relates to our present condition. Typography
is a phenomena of our language that is infl u-
enced by cultural perspectives—this determines
the methods of visual communication and writ-
ing systems. Ultimately, the infl uence of design
as a modern media is revealed as a powerful tool
of infl uence in society and culture.
Class: Advanced Typography
Faculty: Don Pollack
Level: Senior or Graduate
Duration of Project: One Semester
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Undaunted Courage
31
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Undaunted Courage, The American Frontier
Student: Salome McCaskill
My project was about a fi ctional nineteenth-
century typesetter living in the Rocky Mountain
territory of the American West. The artifact de-
signs were original constructions based on post-
ers, letterheads, and 130-year-old receipts from
the special collections of the Chicago Public
Library. All of the landscape scenes in the book
are original photographs I took from locations
in Colorado. This project was a perfect set up
for me to further explore the traditions of letter-
press and typesetting.
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clockwise from top:
The London Times, Late War Edition,
November 13, 1916 (2007), 19.25'' × 14''
(49 by 35.5 cm)
Passport of Dr. Yu Tsun, 1914,
(2007) Photograph of Captain
Richard Madden, London, 1915 (2007)
Photograph of entrance to the
home of Dr. Stephen Albert
Handmade book, The Garden of
Forking Paths, by Jorge Luis Borges,
8.25'' × 5.25'' (21 by 13.5 cm)
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Undaunted Courage,
Jorge Luis Borges’s Garden of Forking Paths
Student: Mark Addison Smith
I did a visual retelling of Jorge Luis Borges’s story The Garden of
Forking Paths, as a means to understand narrative structure, char-
acter development, tone, and typographic nuances rooted within
the historical context of World War I. The process began with a
critical reading and collage interpretation of Borges’s text, set on
the eve of the Battle of the Somme when an agent of the German
empire assassinates a famous Sinologist to convey the name of
a city to be attacked. A visual and typographic breakdown of the
story resulted in tangible hand-rendered pieces of “evidence,”
including aged photographs, passports, teaching certifi cates, train
schedules, and newspapers from the early 1900s, which would
become visual examples to accompany the fi nal text. The com-
pleted book was case bound, part short story and part exhibition
catalog with artifacts.
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Í
Undaunted Courage,
The Secret Life of 008
Student: K. J. Kim
I designed and wrote about a
fi ctional intelligence offi cer
working during the 1970s Cold
War era. She was based on the
autobiography of Markus Wolf,
the chief of security of East
Germany, and her cover alias
was that of a stage actress. De-
signing my book in the format
of a theatrical script, I created
print ephemera, period piece
designs that have encrypted
codes and messages between
fi ctional agents.
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This book was written in Chinese and English
about an immigrant, Mei Lin. The story began
at the outbreak of the American Civil War in
1861. I studied historical documents of the late
nineteenth century in the United States and
China. My goal was to fi nd a personal connec-
tion to the lives of early Chinese immigrants
in America and to study the issues of a cultural
diaspora as well as gender and identity in the in-
creasingly globalized world of the late nineteenth
century. As a foreign student from Taiwan, I could
connect to the issues surrounding identity by
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Undaunted Courage, The American Frontier—In-Between
Student: Yifen Liu
creating a fi ctional immigrant character. I could
relate to my own complex history of coming from
Taiwan and having to adjust to a new land. My
aim was to explore these issues through the life
of a Chinese woman at a specifi c time and place.
This particular research project shed new light on
the unique power of design, in that I might be able
to help others by giving voice to the major issues
of a society. By exploring the methodology of this
project, I could consider this as an approach for
investigating the role of China in the evolution of
Taiwan’s complex historical background.
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Undaunted Courage, The Secret Life of 008
Student: Christian Eggenberger
This project originated during my exchange se-
mester at the School of the Art Institute of Chi-
cago. I came from Switzerland, and this was my
most memorable school experience in Chicago.
The project followed a very different path of
conception and construction than I had previ-
ously experienced. In the end, it was amazing to
bring all the prepared artifacts together to cre-
ate a handmade book about a Cold War spy. I
laid it out with four parallel stories told simul-
taneously.
the projects 143
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