The Distorted Present
Book cover
2024
A book designed to convey the essence of the ESP, precognition.
Precognition is the supernormal ability to foresee future events whilst being in the present. Being able to see the future would invariably lead to the change of what was seen.
Project Overview
A book that uses visual language to convey the ESP, precognition.
In ‘The Distorted Present’, a teenage girl with precognition ability struggles to live a normal life in the modern world. She constantly finds herself entering another space, seeing event of accidents, deaths, and disasters that are set to occur in the future. This slowly causes the distortion of her present life.
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Adobe Illustrator, Indesign, Photoshop
1
Brainstorm
Precognition: its attributes and association
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MINDMAP
TEXT FOR BOOKCOVER
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Title + subtitle
The Distorted Present + Understanding Precognition
Author’s name
E Venn Liew
“This magnificent series exposes how our need to believe in Extrasensory Perception reveals deep cultural anxieties about our lives, our society and our place in the natural world.”—Stephen Fry
Puff quote for cover
Precognition is the supernormal ability to foresee future events whilst being in the present. It involves the brain being able to travel through space and time and being indirectly present when the event takes place. Being able to see the future would invariably lead to the change of what was seen.
This is explored in ‘The Distorted Present’, a teenage girl with precognition ability struggles to live a normal life in the modern world. She constantly finds herself entering another space, seeing event of accidents, deaths, and disasters that are set to occur in the future. This slowly causes the distortion of her present life.
Back cover blurb
E Venn Liew is a Melbourne-based author and was a student of Swinburne University of Technology. ‘The Distorted Present’ is her first published book inspired by her own precognitive dream experience. She has always been intrigued by supernatural abilities and hence, loves to watch fantasy movies.
Author’s biography
THUMBNAIL SKETCHES: CONCEPTS
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2
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
THUMBNAIL SKETCHES: HIGH FIDELITY
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3
DIGITAL ROUGHS
In my first digital rough, I wanted to create a glitch effect on the typography to represent my book title ‘The Distorted Present’ as well as describing the process of precognition, ‘glitching’ between future events of different times, in a figurative manner.
I used two main different colours in my design, red and white, to represent the future and present respectively. To show the literal meaning of future as upcoming events, I placed the distorted red fragments of the text on the top of the page, and vice versa, the white fragments for present are seemingly falling towards the end of the page.
In my second digital rough, I stretched and warped the title to take up half the space of the page. This is intended to suggest the wavering changes in the present time due to the ability to see the future.
The title is also elevated with decrease in size as approaching to the right hand side to show that it is heading towards the time ahead.
FINAL SUCCESS
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I found my third digital rough to be the most successful one in expressing the idea of precognition. I disguised parts of the title’s typeface to depict an incomplete picture of the future as events leading up to the specific time can be changed due to precognition abilities.
The part of the title that says ‘present’ has been deliberately placed underneath the levitated and distorted typeface to figuratively illustrate the literal meaning of precognition; the person is standing at present looking ahead into the future events.
The black shadow under the white typography supposedly conveys the present events, and also gives a more obvious contrast between the present and future.
REFLECTION
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The visual strategy I have employed to express the idea of the ESP precognition is to emphasise on the figurative format of ‘future’.
During the design and production process, I found it challenging to express the idea of ‘seeing the future’ in different ways. I was able to overcome this by exploring and experimenting different typographic compositions, focusing on placements, typeface weight and size, perspective of illusion and contrasts through shadow or colours.
I was able to succeed in this task for incorporating and considering many of these elements to produce my three digital roughs. In particular, using different colours and/or typeface weight to create a harmonious balance with all the different components of the design.