A String of Unfortunate Events

"A String of Unfortunate Events"

Written by Nick Burchill, and designed by Jenny Tran.

Original letter found on Letters of Note (I am begging you to read this!)

A project for Typography III at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. All pictures presented here are not the entirety of the book.

When I started this project, I thought finding a letter to replicate into a book would be difficult. That is until I came across the title, "A string of unfortunate events." Naturally, anyone would want to know: How unfortunate were the events? Surely it couldn't have been that bad. My curiosity was peaked. The next thing I knew, I was reading this letter over and over again, out loud, to 10 different unsuspecting friends.

It truly made my day and gave all of us a great laugh. After all, it was such a specific situation to be in, you would think it came right out of a cartoon! With that in mind, I tried my best to capture the utter chaos described in the letter, using type to resemble the space that Nick Burchill was in and what he saw.

I took inspiration from newspaper headlines and decided that for the materials of the pages, newsprint would work the best. Instead of a traditional book cover, I went with a book jacket made of handmade mulberry paper. The paper contains black tamarind leaves, which seemed fitting for the visual appearance and soft texture of seagull feathers.

This is a lightweight, fragile book, similar to how fragile the state of Nick's hotel room was, and the light-hearted yet sincere tone of his apology. This book also has two sides: On the main side when you open the book, the pages are seemingly normal until you open them to reveal posters. On the back side, after you refold the posters, you can vertically open the book accordion-style, where you'll see the back side is portraying the voice of the seagull.