We chose the New York Times cover of May 24, 2020, which marked the harrowing milestone of 100,000 deaths from Covid-19 in the United States as our object to expand, translate and contextualise.
By collecting information on group memories, statistics and news under the pandemic, we wanted to truly and objectively reflect everything that is happening in the surrounding society through the medium of experimental book design, so as to output thoughts and values on the global crisis.
When graphic design becomes a medium for human beings to re-examine memories, events and grief, it can not only better study and excavate the practical value and social significance of graphic design language, but also enable the public to reflect on the past and restart the future.
Week 1
For the first week, our group decided to redesign the cover page with our own understanding of the situation.
For the first two iterations, I was experimenting with the idea of how to only use colors and visuals to express something that horrifying and sadness.
Then I started to explore the idea of the conspiracy theories that swept across the globe as well as the misinformation and the fact that people are numb to the numbers. By using encryption language, it sarcastically showing how people are reacting to the news related to COVID-19. The ignorant, numbness, and mistrust.
Week 2
Looking at the work from all of our group members in its totality, we got the sense that we were telling the story of the pandemic. This resonates with the idea of newspapers being a repository for the narrative of our collective experience of time and events.
In essence, telling the story of the pandemic through graphic, visual form, serves the same function as a newspaper itself, thereby transcending the front page of the NYT we chose to speak to the wider context and usage of newspapers as media and memory.
My work spoke to the very beginning of the pandemic. What was happening was incomprehensible even to scientists and doctors. It also felt violent and scary and confusing, full of misinformation and questions.
Then everything shut down and the novelty of being in lockdown came to the fore. This is where Reya’s work would come in, talking about how to deal with lockdown, the coping mechanisms and structures people created in their lives when normality ceased to exist.
Then Nat’s work would come in, grappling with the grief of overwhelming magnitude of the death toll.
And finally Steck’s work tells the end of the story, the survivors of the pandemic who bear the scars of the disease.
In creating this narrative arc we think we can transcend the specific moment in time of just “100,000 deaths” and turn it into a reflection of living through one of the most consequential events in recent history.
Link to our online flip book: https://online.flippingbook.com/view/211507008/34/