4. Introduction sketch

We’re used to a particular way of approaching a text – expecting a certain order in which information is communicated. Linear, predictable, not in the aspect of what’s said, but in the way it’s structured.

There are so many elements involved in the act of reading: receiving, comprehending, and making sense of given information, but also noticing any patterns or connections, interpreting, anticipating and predicting. That tension between what I already know and what I don’t know yet changes over time. Even when you face a page full of text, you only read one word at a time, and fragments of the message slowly fall into place.

If reading could be seen as experience spread over time, so could be arrangement of the text. Layout does not need to be limited to visual or spatial aspect. In fact, maybe reshaping the activity of reading could correspond more with its nature? Maybe this time-based quality could come through the design?

Through the series of experiments, it came to me that space-, time-, and movement-based layout very much influences not only perception of its content, but also expression. It can impose a sequence or welcome simultaneity, introduce chance or choice, open to possibilities of multiple outcomes. On the other hand, it can set the tone and add on to the character of what’s being read – chaotic, busy, still, gradual, playful, rhythmical, hidden, reflective.

It seems that what and how you read could be so tied together, that you can’t really tell one from another. The relationship between the words and the design plays an important role in the overall impression.

You can follow a sequence of movements guiding you through a track of thought, your expectation of the message changing with each fragment. You can read about what you’re doing with paper, the activity and the message informing on one another.  You can piece together fragments of sentences without any particular order that would create a certain overall mood.

See the series of designs in front of you as a possible range of impressions, effects, and experiences.

…

Just out of curiosity, I wanted to see how fragments of the introduction would read on some paper models: