the vegetarian
printed material, 2020. 18.5 x 18.5cm.
The Vegetarian is a typographic book layout project. The brief of the project was to re-design the layout of a chosen text into a book format. I picked the book, The Vegetarian, written by Han Kang. The book's content focusses on the protagonist, Yeong-hye, who slowly descends into insanity after she had a violent dream about eating meat. She decides to switch her diet and was soon met with lots of disagreement between her and her family. The section of the book selected the text from, is about how her photographer and videographer brother-in-law uses her as his muse. He engages her in his creative foray and paints flowers all over her naked body.
For the entire book, I used a grid format, with some dynamic arrangements of the letterforms. Recurring motif of the word flower in Korean, 꽃 kkoch, was also used in the book, to symbolise the flower element. The entire book was done in a black and white format, with the background increasingly turning darker and lighter as the protagonist, Yeong-hye, sinks deeper into depression, then bounces back again. Another motif applied is the disconnecting curving lines, symbolising her sinking in and out of her psychosis.
Used an accordion format of stitching up the book to sequence the entire flow of the book, and to chronologically show Yeong-hye's descend into insanity.
