InDesign, Photoshop, After Effects
Nothing more thrilling than a murder mystery and killer robots. I, Robot is perhaps one of my favorite movies because of the characters, storyline, and action. So when I was tasked with creating a typographic book using the script of a movie, I immediately turned to the best in robot apocalypse and mystery.
I, Robot is a 2004 film based on a screenplay written by Jeff Vintar. In 2035, highly intelligent robots are commonplace, operating under the three laws of robotics. Detective Del Spooner, a cop hardened against robots and AI, investigates the alleged suicide of U.S. Robotics founder Alfred Lanning. With the help of a robotics expert, Spooner discovers a conspiracy that may enslave the human race.
The movie highlights many parallels between man and machine. These moments were key in my design decisions, creating more structured typesetting for Sonny the robot and looser setting for Spooner’s human side. I wasn’t able to make the book, but I did plan out the material for the cover. The final construction would be a metal cover with a side binding, bolts holding the pages inside. All the spreads have binary as decoration while lines from the script interact with each other in different ways. Along with the book, I had to create a short animation related to the book.
The process for designing this book was very involved and continued to evolve. Because I enjoy book formatting, I’m very used to structuring text in a readable fashion much like any novel or textbook. This project required breaking those bounds and tweaking text in ways that they are read and experienced at the same time. A lot of planning and experimentation with Photoshop and Illustrator went into the majority of these pages.
The animation was the trickiest part. This class was my first experience diving into animation. While this video was the second I got to work on, I put a lot more effort into it so I could create an interesting experience through type. Consulting my professor and looking up videos on After Effects, along with a lot of time spent lining up audio and effects, I came to this final video.
Audio was sourced from part of the film.
