I am a grad student in the MArch program at UIC and am in the midst of launching my own project with a colleague, Danny Travis. It is an architecture comic-zine that seeks to tell a story in the combination of CAD style drawings with whimsical cartoons and narrative. The project is called Beautifully Banal and looks to combine the sort of super mundane drawing conventions you would expect to see from any generic architecture project and uses them to tell a story through a new lens of representation--namely one that prioritizes a spatial understanding above all else. Through working in this method we hope to uncover a deeper understanding of drawing conventions used in architecture as well as try to connect with a larger audience that may not be trained in architecture. (As well as poking fun at the mundane routine most of us find ourselves in by the day).
The project initially won second place in the architecture fairy-tales competition hosted by Blank Space NYC, and we are now in the process of expanding our comic into a full publication. We have launched a Kickstarter campaign for the project last Monday, but we are seeking out avenues to share the work now with others as well as to open a discussion about the role of story-driven work within architecture communication-- I think this type of project is novel in its efforts to connect with both architects and a general audience simultaneously so we think it has a real potential to reach a greater number of people, and were hoping some of the people of Archinect would be interested. If you’d like to see more about the project, you can view our in-progress Kickstarter page, as well as this link that will show you a high-res preview of the project itself. Please take a moment to share your thoughts, we would love to hear what you think about it!
You seem to put a lot of small things in and at 8x10 trade size, it looks like a pain to read. I'm viewing it at basically actual scale on my monitor and it is a bit illegible when you try to cram a lot at a resolution that'll require squinting or a little magnifying glass.
This comment is not against you but some parts feel unpolished and amateurish. Off-center word spacing in places, the font is questionable, and the rectangular text boxes hard to pick apart from the background. Can you not introduce even one extra color in the printing? Or at least adjust elements for better contrast.
Thanks for your comments kickrocks! During the process of designing this, I was constantly doing test prints to ensure the legibility of all of the elements on 11x17 paper. I was worried the small text would be illegible, but actually it appears highly readable when printed. Why did I opt to make it so small? I really wanted to pack as much detail into a scene as possible, be it labeling or narrative or dialogue, each carrying its own sort of hierarchy. I think this isn't so far out of line with the works of Chris Ware, in which none of his scenes can really be rushed through, but they are all packed with an exorbitant amount of detail. I think scanning around the page for additional information is part of the fun.
When viewed on screen the text is no good at all, and I get that, which is a huge reason why I wanted to carry this through as a print project. One of the print options going forward is to do an over-sized newsprint, which I think is going to be really cool and allows us to blow up the artwork a little bit. Resolving the text at the print size with an actual gutter from the bound book is going to require a lot of attention going forward, and I plan to re-work the spacing/boxes with most of the work that's been done so far. Your suggestion about adding a color as an accent could be viable as well. I appreciate your feedback!
Thing is, most of the details will be ignored because it requires a lot of strain to see. The audience on here might zoom in but the average person probably won't bother. It's the issue of scale and medium. For a PDF file, go nuts because it can zoom quite deep but print is limited in resolution and depth. Ware uses color and makes shorter notes, his text boxes are easier to differentiate so at least there's a visual hierarchy of things one ought to spend more time examining. If you can introduce at least one color, definitely exploit that however you can.
You might have fun with one big over-sized poster print that folds up small. The trade book seems like the wrong size for the scope of this project. Thinking about construction documents, over-sized printing might be a more interactive experience for the average person.
Hope you do well with this. Not trying to put you down but addressing some concerns that might irritate some of your original funders. It's one thing to see digital vectors but another to read it in print.
Of Cartoons, Architecture, and Storytelling
Hello fellow architecture enthusiasts!
I am a grad student in the MArch program at UIC and am in the midst of launching my own project with a colleague, Danny Travis. It is an architecture comic-zine that seeks to tell a story in the combination of CAD style drawings with whimsical cartoons and narrative. The project is called Beautifully Banal and looks to combine the sort of super mundane drawing conventions you would expect to see from any generic architecture project and uses them to tell a story through a new lens of representation--namely one that prioritizes a spatial understanding above all else. Through working in this method we hope to uncover a deeper understanding of drawing conventions used in architecture as well as try to connect with a larger audience that may not be trained in architecture. (As well as poking fun at the mundane routine most of us find ourselves in by the day).
The project initially won second place in the architecture fairy-tales competition hosted by Blank Space NYC, and we are now in the process of expanding our comic into a full publication. We have launched a Kickstarter campaign for the project last Monday, but we are seeking out avenues to share the work now with others as well as to open a discussion about the role of story-driven work within architecture communication-- I think this type of project is novel in its efforts to connect with both architects and a general audience simultaneously so we think it has a real potential to reach a greater number of people, and were hoping some of the people of Archinect would be interested. If you’d like to see more about the project, you can view our in-progress Kickstarter page, as well as this link that will show you a high-res preview of the project itself. Please take a moment to share your thoughts, we would love to hear what you think about it!
Hi-Res PDF Preview: http://www.theculleralexander.com
You seem to put a lot of small things in and at 8x10 trade size, it looks like a pain to read. I'm viewing it at basically actual scale on my monitor and it is a bit illegible when you try to cram a lot at a resolution that'll require squinting or a little magnifying glass.
This comment is not against you but some parts feel unpolished and amateurish. Off-center word spacing in places, the font is questionable, and the rectangular text boxes hard to pick apart from the background. Can you not introduce even one extra color in the printing? Or at least adjust elements for better contrast.
Thanks for your comments kickrocks! During the process of designing this, I was constantly doing test prints to ensure the legibility of all of the elements on 11x17 paper. I was worried the small text would be illegible, but actually it appears highly readable when printed. Why did I opt to make it so small? I really wanted to pack as much detail into a scene as possible, be it labeling or narrative or dialogue, each carrying its own sort of hierarchy. I think this isn't so far out of line with the works of Chris Ware, in which none of his scenes can really be rushed through, but they are all packed with an exorbitant amount of detail. I think scanning around the page for additional information is part of the fun.
When viewed on screen the text is no good at all, and I get that, which is a huge reason why I wanted to carry this through as a print project. One of the print options going forward is to do an over-sized newsprint, which I think is going to be really cool and allows us to blow up the artwork a little bit. Resolving the text at the print size with an actual gutter from the bound book is going to require a lot of attention going forward, and I plan to re-work the spacing/boxes with most of the work that's been done so far. Your suggestion about adding a color as an accent could be viable as well. I appreciate your feedback!
Thing is, most of the details will be ignored because it requires a lot of strain to see. The audience on here might zoom in but the average person probably won't bother. It's the issue of scale and medium. For a PDF file, go nuts because it can zoom quite deep but print is limited in resolution and depth. Ware uses color and makes shorter notes, his text boxes are easier to differentiate so at least there's a visual hierarchy of things one ought to spend more time examining. If you can introduce at least one color, definitely exploit that however you can.
You might have fun with one big over-sized poster print that folds up small. The trade book seems like the wrong size for the scope of this project. Thinking about construction documents, over-sized printing might be a more interactive experience for the average person.
Hope you do well with this. Not trying to put you down but addressing some concerns that might irritate some of your original funders. It's one thing to see digital vectors but another to read it in print.
I don't like Comic Sans but it is pretty legible.
http://comicneue.com/
See if that works. Serif is a bit odd, honestly a sans would probably be easier to digest nowadays.
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