Sometimes if you look at the smallest details in Nature. You will find hidden magic.
When I was a child I read Alice in Wonderland in Hungarian. I never thought that I would look for faces and expressions on the bark of trees to express my own personal world. One of my favourite quotes is the following.
“THE WORLD IS BUT A CANVAS, THROUGH OUR IMAGINATION
- HENRY DAVID THOREAU
”
If you find magic under grass and stones you will find the hidden Paradise.
About Alice in Wonderland
When I started the Design for Production unit at Swinburne Bachelor of Design I never thought that this would lead me to express my own thoughts through Alice in Wonderland..
The only requirements of this project was to create everything from scratch. They said we can use 2500 words from the original book. This project was quite challenging. I needed to compress the whole of the storyline into limited words. I decided that I would create an adult version of Alice in Wonderland. I used graphical elements for creating caricature, but I brought my own imagination into the project. They said we can use the fonts in anyway we want. I applied colourful wording and because Alice is a child and makes mistakes. I created spelling errors by not separating words. If you look at the book you will find these spelling errors, you will be part of a guessing game, where the words create the hidden magic of the book .
In this project I created at least 15 different scenes and at least 22 different characters to entice the reader to wonder around more in the story by using their own imagination, and waiting for the hidden magic in the following chapters. Also Alice's character changes, when she feels happy you will see her amazing transformation in illustration form, if she feels stressed she almost turns into an optical illusion image.
I enhanced this publication applying Spot UV elements half of them in Adobe Illustrator as I created the characters , and the other half in Adobe InDesign to illustrate Alice's metamorphosis and the microcosmos where she explored the upside- down world and where she fought against injustice and helped others. Just like when she saved number 2 and number 5 from being executed.
I think one of my favourite scenes is the Hallway where she finds the key to the hidden door behind the curtain. The other is the Pool of Tears as each drop of Tears is drawn separately almost like a piece of art. Spot UV elements were also applied to enhance the audiences curiosity for the next chapter. Even with the table of contents of one of the chapters spot UV elements were applied so you can only see it if you are keen on details . The cover page the teapot poor the magic for the vertical Wonderland that world so when you open the book the magic will start.
As Charles Eames said:''The DETAILS ARE NOT IN DETAILS, THEY MAKE THE DESIGN'.
Pool of the Tears
Hallway with the Little Gold Key on the Table
Back and Front cover of the Book