Typography - Storytelling - Information hierarchy — Grid structure — Pacing and sequencing — Detailing
"Books have often been and still are the agents of creeds which have shaped and reshaped humanity"
ISTD project
Brief: Choose one of the publications from the book that resonates with you. Investigate the significance of the work at the time of publication and the subsequent influence the work
has had in shaping world views – social, political, cultural,
technological or economic.
has had in shaping world views – social, political, cultural,
technological or economic.
Shaping the world one book at a time. Through reading the list of ‘100 Books that Changed the World’ I realised how important it is to be educated on the books that have made the world what it is today. A lot of these books are extremely old, dating right back to 2800 BC. Therefore reading old books like these for most people is out of the cards.
Roget’s Thesaurus, number 48 on the list is the original thesaurus which has progressed into the digital world. Like The Bible and Shakespeare, Roget’s Thesaurus has since shaped the world as a cultural artefact. It is a standard part of every reference library and has sold over 40 million copies. Published in 1852 it was a powerful tool for the English language. ‘More than just a collection of related words - Peter Mark Roget intended his Thesaurus to be a classification of all knowledge.’ Roget’s Thesaurus has led to further research in human language technologies, with the advancement into the digital world.
The book I have created, ‘A catalogue of words’ encapsulates the significance of Roget’s Thesaurus in one place. It is aimed at the young adults of the contemporary world we live in today, helping them to gain knowledge and understanding of the thesaurus. This journey was communicated in a quick easy read, which flows through four sections.
Book Cover
Mockups
Inside spreads
'A Catalogue of Words' begins with an introduction to Peter Mark Roget, his childhood and list making. It then leads into Roget's Thesaurus itself and the significance of it as an expression of all knowledge as well as its specific classification system. The third section is all about how the book changed the world through words, highlighting the different types of thesauri as well as its progression into the digital age. The book concludes with National Thesaurus Day as a celebration of such a necessary book for communication of the English language.
The thinking behind it
The design direction I chose to take was a list approach. After analysing thesaurus listings I chose to replicate this style using black and grey text. I used a yellow stroke highlight as emphasis throughout. This approach formed the basis for the rest of my book. From word diagrams to formulated long lists, word trees and thesaurus listings, these are the types of lists that populate the expressive type pages in the book. The main typeface that was used for the expressive typography was a serif typeface called ‘Thesaurus’. This was a typeface created specifically to be a digital look-a-like of the original metal type used for the first thesaurus. It is paired with a ‘Nunito Sans’ which is a well-balanced san serif typeface used in the body copy and headings on the content pages of the book. To finish, a narrow long book format was used to reflect the long lists within the text and a thin page weight to simulate the thin pages of a thesaurus. It has been saddleback bound which was the best binding for catalogues and short reads.
