Designing for Genres

This project is about experimenting with ideas of how particular symbols, typography, and colors have evolved to represent specific genres of books and movies. One should be able to look at a book cover or movie poster and clearly read what the genre of the story is. This is due to pattern recognition and a history of Genre Conventions defining how we design for particular stories. This designed experience allows the audience to explore these Genre Conventions as well as actively participate in finding how they can express themselves both as positives and negatives.

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The designed experience contains six Genre Convention boxes, which act as building blocks for designing for genres, as well as 24 book covers (four covers across six genres) designed by myself keeping these conventions in mind. Viewers were allowed to manipulate these boxes and disorganize the book covers to see how Genre Conventions allow us to make sense out of chaos.

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You can click on any cover for my thoughts on each design.