Pretty Ugly
Pretty Ugly was made as a student project at Hochschule Düsseldorf, under the supervision of Victor Malsy.
35 short stories, once written as a column for DU magazine, summarized in one volume. Misanthropy, irony and panic join here in cheerful brutality. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Each story has its own trick and bites the nerves of the reader harder and harder.
The volume is divided into five chapters of seven stories each, with each one increasing in content and visual appeal to pain. However, the dosage of that pain is left to the reader’s discretion, each story works on its own, as does the image created by five different experimental layout systems.
Together with found-footage images of celebrities and extending serifs, the visual level supports the textual one.
I took Ronaldson, originally drawn by Alexander Kay in 1884 and digitized by Canada Type, and, with permission of the foundry, made a variable version by lengthening the serifs of selected uppercase letters. The serifs cut more and more into the sentence.
Each story has its own title page with the title on the left, set in Jabin, and a page filling image on the right.
The author chose celebrities as potential actors if the stories would be turned into films. The analogue processed images play an important role, as they reflect each respective chapter in increasing processing. In the appendix you can find all 81 images.
