You Then Me Now Typographic Book Design

The narration of this book is based on daily conversations between my mum and I.

There are five stories featured that reflect value differences between my mum, who is of traditional Chinese value and me, who had experienced migration thus represent modern and diverse values.The story used a play writing style which consists of introduction, scene title, setting, at rise, cast and the act.

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I developed a typography format using a landscape storytelling layout that best displayed our conversation with my mum’s sayings on top and mine at the bottom based on a horizon line in the middle. When the audiences read this part, the book would come with a gatefold of four-page spread displaying the entire dialogue. 

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The five series of images that I have chosen wisely are juxtaposed two images side by side, which focus on the same theme to tell a story that is corresponding to the conversation. 

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The typeface I have chosen to represent my mum (Freight Serif) and I (Freight sans-serif ) are both of the same family type to express our similar connection yet different values. Besides typeface, I have also played with different scale and thickness of typography to show emotion changes. For example, putting the type bigger and bolder to show strong emotion and intense conflict.

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The conceptual approach of a “phrase book” demonstrates per- fectly the feel of the book design. “Phrase book” was a hand written booklet used to assist earlier Australian Chinese immigrants to learn English pronunciation with some English words that could be of a totally different meaning. Although the method works to pronounce the word better but easily end up with funny, ridiculous and confus- ing context resulting in misunderstanding, which serves the perfect purpose of demonstrating the consequential differences among young, old, modern, traditional, west and east.