The Great House Cover and Spreads
For the cover design, I examined common threads for history textbooks aimed at an older lay audience, like use of photography and serif typefaces. I also considered ways these elements could be subverted to make The Great House stand out among history textbooks. Because of the natural visual draw human faces have, I found historical art including the face of a pharaoh and presented the figure prominently as a point of interaction. Inspired by Ancient Egyptian murals, I added vibrancy to the originally completely sand-colored relief to enhance the feeling of life and add some depth.
To integrate the main portion of the original research project, I included it as sidebar due to its niche focus. Before laying out the sidebar itself, I decided how to integrate it into the larger flow of the textbook. Because the topic is tangential and not necessary for the main points of the chapter, I chose to prioritize a smoother transition for the main text by having the sidebar on either side of one page rather than as a spread of two pages so readers only have to turn one page to continue the main text. I also distinguished it by background color to immediately indicate to readers the change in the type of content.
A significant focus of the original research project’s design was clarifying the relevant parts of artifacts used as examples for an audience unfamiliar with Ancient Egyptian writing. To clarify the significance of the visual examples to the sidebar text, I highlighted or labeled the relevant portions while still including the larger context of the artifacts.
The Great House is a textbook design inspired by a research project for a graphic design history course on connections between divinity and monarchy in Ancient Egyptian writing. My goal was to create a cover and interior layout that would engage readers and integrate the subject of the textbook while still being appropriate for its market and providing a seamless, structured reading experience.
Because of the extensive length of textbooks, my design for the interior focused on first creating a structural foundation before considering details. For example, I chose the sizes for different levels of text based on the leading of the body text so that everything would align properly with the baseline grid.
Another important consideration was the need for readers to quickly navigate between sections. Initially, I created designs that integrated the chapter number with the chapter title and introduction; however, this made the number more difficult to spot because of its position and size. Additionally, some of the layouts would differ between chapters due to the varying widths of the numbers. For the best visibility and consistency, I chose a large, high-contrast style for the chapter numbers aligned to the outer edge for better visibility for a student trying to quickly flip to the right page.
