344 Questions: The Creative Person’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Insight, Survival, and Artistic Fulfillment.
In the spring of 2011 Stefan asked me to assist him with a book project called, 344 Questions: The Creative Person’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Insight, Survival, and Artistic Fulfillment. The intent was to capture the uniquely creative style of Stefan’s Ink and Circumstances articles for use in a book format. Stefan really wanted the layout to invite the reader to write their answers and thoughts to the questions in the book. Providing ample white areas allows the reader to finish the layout with their own drawings and musings. The moleskin inspired size and flexibound cover allow the book to go with the reader in their pocket and lays flat to jot things down.
The book features four fonts made with Stefan’s handwriting plus two display fonts with gradient fills customized to each spread. I worked with the two display fonts as image files to typeset the names of each contributor. We also worked on various updates to the handwritten text font to modify and kern the letters for better legibility. With each page requiring illustrated boxes, arrows and compositional elements, Stefan drew all 142 pages on tissue paper. The files were prepared so they could be quickly customized to be uniquely suited to the content on each spread. We also revisited the fonts after the first printing to fix nagging kerning issues and optimize the fonts for more languages.
Role: typography, production, pre-press, image re-touching, custom font updates, typesetting tissue scans
Software: Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, FontLab Studio
Design Office: 344 Design
Art Director: Stefan G. Bucher
Writer: Stefan G. Bucher
Illustration: Stefan G. Bucher
Designers: Stefan G. Bucher and Tim Moraitis
Published by: New Riders Press; 1 edition (August 10, 2011)
Flexibound: 144 pages
