Introducing Bret Victor - Magazine

12 min readMar 4, 2022

Communication Studio | 2022 Spring

As the project continues, I started by revisiting my asset library from the poster portion, but also hoped to explore some more ideas in order to not limit myself to one style/idea. My initial expectations for the booklet were more text-heavy with supporting information graphics as Victor’s work speaks more in those mediums.

Thumbnail Sketches

many many of them

Covers

Content Spreads

Other Ideas

left - a list of quotes; middle - Victor’s bookshelf; right - a “bookshelf” of Victor’s recommended books

Feedback

the graph seems like a great idea to pursue, the idea of quantifying unquantifiable things adds fits his work and personality
the bookshelf itself as a spread is very impactful, however, the resolution would be a concern
there needs to be a clear storyline throughout
consider how to handle “surprise pages” in relation to others, full spreads could break the pace
PUT IN REAL TEXT and GRID
start thinking about captioning systems
go to book stores and flip through covers to analyze what elements make them intriguing
for “drawn assets” do it in real life
if Victor replies, have that interview the main focus of the booklet
Consider the value of this booklet, why would someone look through it?

Interview!

I lost hope after 5 days but then I saw this after waking up on my couch at 4 am in pure confusion. I genuinely thought I butt emailed my professor, Brett, by accident, somehow. Glad that wasn’t the case.

I then spent some time coming up with interview questions, which was actually quite hard and nerve-wracking. Had to consult the internet on “How to write emails to public figures” because who else would teach you that? With mostly serious questions to help me understand his work process and goals, I still managed to mix in some personal questions. I was having a crisis about what I wanted to do with life and wondered if he had any thoughts about the future of the design field.

Now I wait and hope he doesn’t hate me after asking all these questions.

Zine 1.0

Cover

I wanted to use something memorable from my poster on my booklet cover because it would tie together as a set. I was not a fan of the opposites idea though, as it felt like a cliche that didn’t add anything other than the fact that it is for the front and back cover. What can I put to catch one's eye?

Intro

Wanted something unconventional to start with, but the text is unacceptably small and seems more like a texture than text.

The table of contents incorporated a playful illustration that also appears on his website.

Early Work Part1

This is the first layout spread that aims to introduce Victor’s work, the use of sideway text felt appropriate if used throughout. Something that Victor talked about in his essay The Future of Interaction Design is the use of our physical hands. Because the booklet is meant to be printed and held in one’s hands, I thought it would utilize that ability to the maximum, without it being too annoying for the reader of course.

Early Work Part 2

The second one is the same thing, but I realized that I wasn’t giving any breathing space by putting these two spreads together.

Transition

This spread was meant to be the center spread and also break the grid to show how this period really impacted and changed Victor’s work. The initial idea was to put text and images in 3d space, but I couldn’t figure out where to even start. The content is somewhat modular, so I might do something in that format for my next steps.

honestly, the random placement of text actually could or could not be intentional due to the anti-design style of things. That could be a direction?

Current Work

In this spread, I wanted to return to the usual format but somewhat differently. The title typeface was made as an alternative to its original logo.

EndNote

For the final Spread, I wanted to make an endnote that would contain the response from Victor’s interview. At this point, I thought his response would fit a page, spoiler alert, it didn’t.

Feedback

Set up a type system within InDesign (paragraph styles)
Body text should be 8 point size and print them out to test readability. Also, be aware of cutting off body text
Content is too text-heavy, make the work more important
The cover should have a meaningful relationship with the design philosophy and avoid cliche contrast covers. maybe the flower asset?
take out document margin settings and draw grid lines to leave space in the bottom line
The Dynamicland logo asset should show up in other places too, Brett Like
Maybe different layers of typography say different things?
think about page numbers
bookshelf idea counts as a portrait, and so is a graph.
body text body text body text
- set up a type system and make text 8 point size to make the work more important
- cover should have a meaningful relationship with the design philosophy
- take out document margin settings and draw grid lines to leave space in the bottom line
- dynamic land show up in other places too
Different layers if typography say different things
- think about page numbers
- bookshelf idea is a portrait, graph/timeline and humour
- be aware of the bit mapping, def start printing things out
- apple thing maybe make it more obvious it's unavailable because its

Interview!!

I was very stuck and dependent on the text for progress because I was worried that the images would not be able to speak for themselves. I was relieved and very thankful to see that the response was actually packed with information and links to more resources. This inspired me a lot, but also kind of maybe made me spiral a little bit. Definitely will need more time to understand his work, but that’s going to have to wait a couple of days because it is midterm week yayyyy! 🧅

Developing Individual Spreads

The Graph

This is going to be an important part of the magazine as it gives insight into Victor’s early life as a young man who is just trying to figure things out. By graphing unquantifiable things like “methods of learning”, “things that I would do as a grown-up”, and “existential dread” alongside measures like “number of people interacted each day” and “monthly income”. Everything seems deeply personal as we see the ups and downs in his career. Though there is already a very clear graph available on his website, I wanted to redesign it visually to add more meaning to what this information means and how they correlate with each other. I struggled with color and composition as I want it to be visually intriguing no matter the orientation. Putting everything in black and white first is a good way to work, and though I have already established a color theme in my poster and cover page, I didn’t want to constrict myself and try some other options as well.

Switching between light and dark mode is always a good thing to do when you are stuck with color. I changed the placement of the “existential dread” graph as I thought it would make sense that this is the data that was influenced by other things on this page, and it hovers over everything with a pressing presence.

After settling on the different shades of green and red, I started to tweak the type considering the hierarchy, aligning elements with a consistent rule, and adding dotted lines to help the user read the graph.

Dynamic Land

Both the circles and the sheets of paper on the right page was inspired by how sheets of code in dynamicLand is presented on the table when people are working together. As shown in this photo

I was fairly confident in this layout, until I started to incorprate images, which made the page look messy and confusing. I tried bitmapping and adjusting color tones, but it didn’t work out because there were too many perspectives.

I ditched the unordered format and decreased the amount of pictures, but it lost character and looked very similar to the other pages.

After switching to dark mode, I started playing around with architectural forms and structures. This brought back the dynamic and playfulness, but some elements still feel out of place. The faint Logo in the back was interesting, but since it isn’t displayed anywhere else, it does catch the reader by suprise.

I started filling in more images and used photoshop to change their tones.

After looking at this spread with a fresh eye, I decided to take out some images as the colors started to become too overwhelming. Also tried experimenting with various placements of text.