Visual Book
My book uses food as a vehicle to explore the concepts of home, Chinese-American culture, and specific memories and places. The topic of my book is inspired by a book that I am rereading while at home called Joy Luck Club. I hope to capture the complexity and richness of Chinese culture as well as the Chinese-American experience, especially the relationship between Chinese Americans and their Chinese mothers.
Important themes in my book are culture, identity, intersections, home, family, and upbringing. Emotions present in my book that an audience might respond to are home, comfort, and nostalgia.
Moodboards and Sketches
I was inspired by the fabric artwork of artist Jessica So Ren Tang. I tried to incorporate fabric textures in my book to add a more personal touch to the graphics but later decided to remove the textures.
Digital Iterations
This is a digital iteration with one of my pages with fabric textures incorporated in it. I was not really happy with how the textures were color corrected and the general quality of the images. I also did not want the designs to come across too busy, so I decided to remove them.
Final Project
issuu link: https://issuu.com/laurenku/docs/new_20book_
I used the colors in my book to invoke certain emotions and connotations. I chose the baby blue color in combination with the bright orange color in pages 2 and 3 to show that the food depicted is something that I ate throughout my childhood and is comforting. On pages 4 and 5, I depicted a food that has influences from American Italian food, so I used a deep red color on the right that I associate with Italian restaurants. On pages 6 and 7, I wanted to show that the fruits are considered desserts, so I used brown and pink colors, which are associated with chocolates and sweets. In the last 2 pages of my book, I depicted a more traditional food that is based on a Chinese tradition. I used the colors red and yellow for those pages because those are colors that are associated with Chinese celebrations (e.g. Chinese New Year decorations are red with gold details).
