In this project, I was assigned the poem “Sleepwalk” by John Cooper Clarke.
After researching, I learned that the main setting of the poem took place during the Thatcherite period, a time of many injustices, a widening gap between rich and poor, oppression of workers, and the workers’ movement. In the process of looking through the photo materials, I also found that the seemingly absurd phenomena in the poem could actually find their counterparts in reality.
Therefore, I chose the tesseract form as the carrier of this book design, and chose the main color as the dark blue symbolizing the deep sea.
By studying the content of the poem over and over again, I chose the visual image on the Rubik’s Cube as the “trapped person” and placed the content of the poem on the inner layer of the Cube, making the outer layer of the Cube look more like a “prison” where someone is trapped and is asking for help.
One of the three images on the facade of the Rubik’s Cube is a gradually deformed struggling man.
The bottom side of the Rubik’s Cube is a pair of feet.
The remaining two sides are fingers, here mainly to help the reader how to use the cube (open in accordance with the position of the finger placement)
The inside of the Rubik’s Cube opens to the contents page of the poem
In order to make the work more accessible to the reader, I also made a poster with sound dynamics so that the work would resonate with the reader in a multi-sensory way.
The poster can be viewed by scanning the QR code on the magic cube.
Then I tried to make a model of this book with images to check if it works.
Finally, I chose the material for the tesseract to be single-sided matte film, which can make the tesseract more transparent and can better express the texture of the deep sea.
