For our final project, we were tasked with creating a type book featuring interesting designs pulled from history and a small selection of the great typographic designer Adrian Frutiger's Linotype Typefaces.
Whilst examining said typefaces, most seemed to follow similar trends in that they were very modern or Swiss in design: featuring sans serif, crisp lines, and geometric proportions. However, a few stood from the rest as more distinct, such as Versailles and Breughel. But Breughel was the one to first catch my eye, and so that was the typeface I committed myself to.
As I researched the typeface, I found that it was released by Mr. Frutiger in 1981, a rather eventful year in the United States of America, and one uncanny connection that was far too intriguing to pass up. In 1981, the first of the wildly popular cinematic series Indiana Jones was released in the Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. This wildly successful movie franchise with its charm called me to it and it was perfectly in line with Frutiger's more traditional typeface Breughel. I set off to create something that would compliment the design of the typeface and point back to the great cinematic features that would be held to this day as classics of movie-making history.
Almost every page contains hand-drawn elements, or text brought directly from, or inspired by, the first film.
Pages 8 & 9 which featured a hand-drawn image of Adrian Frutiger as tribute to the late designer and his work.
Pages 10 & 11 were inspired by a map prop used in the original film, pulling out a couple of interesting elements and working them into the composition of the text.
Pages 12 & 13 feature our very own Indiana Jones in one of the most infamous scenes in cinematic history where he swipes away the golden idol of fertility and attempts to make off with his ill-gotten gains.
The final page includes the drawing of one of the intimidating spectres which burst forth from the Ark of the Covenant upon being opened by the Nazis and Belloq (Indiana Jones' long-time mercenary rival). Concluding the book on a somewhat mystical vibe.
