Chronicle Books

 One thing that I really enjoyed out of the presentation early on was Allison's ability to clarify what she does for Chronicle, as a graphic designer. Bridget's role also surprised me a little bit because I would've assumed that her job would've looked exactly like the analogy she gave of an english teacher grading papers.

I had never thought of a publishers role as being responsible for the art direction of a book before. I did assume that they would be responsible for the typesetting within the book, but had never really thought of the significance of that job until undergoing the booklet project for DES 425 at SFSU. Even then I felt as though the project itself granted far more freedom than any publisher would allow.

The reason I had never thought about it was for exactly what Allison had mentioned in that I only really saw the interior of a book for its words and viewed the cover as the designed element. I've definitely stumbled across books where I might wonder to myself why such a small and ugly font was chosen, or why each chapter was centered with a line beneath it, but I had always assumed that these were just trivial choices made by the publisher out of potentially their own logic. 

Thinking about it now, I believe that some of the books I've read need to hire a new graphic designer.. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the booklet project though, and it changed the way I've looked at books since. I enjoyed have the freedom to set type however I wanted and went extreme and played with elements of scale and contrast. 

It's cool to learn about an unorthodox publisher like Chronicle who considers a book's inside design as much as the exterior. 

I've attached a link below to view my Spring of 2023 "Fuck Crystal" Project.

https://www.flipsnack.com/CCFB9D88B7A/dward-content-des425.html