Emil Ruder & Paula Scher

Two Designers Timeline

Overview
This accordion book showcases the life and work of the designers, Emil Ruder and Paula Scher. I was interested in their different approaches to typography; Ruder, known for working in the International Typographic Style, felt typography should be emotionless, and only convey the message as clearly as possible. Scher on the other hand, worked with expressive, big, bold letters.

This project really allowed me to think about the user experience when reading the book. My objectives were to keep the book small, nice to hold in your hand, for it to be read from either ends of the book, and with both timelines juxtaposed next to each other for comparison between the two designers' lives. The result is an accordion book that takes a turn in the middle, moving the timeline from left - right to right - left. This indicates a shift between Ruder's timeline and Scher's as Ruder passes away, and Scher's career begins. It allows for the two timelines to be read separately or side-by-side. While designing this, I made sure that both the spread out timeline and each page spread was visually engaging depending on how the user interacted with it. I added a small legend in at the two ends of the book so that the user would be able to identify which timeline they were looking at from the colour and typeface choice. Emil Ruder was set in Univers, Paula Scher in GT Walshiem, and historical events were set in Bodoni.

Skills Demonstrated
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Illustrator
Photography
Book Design
Print Design
Research
Organization