In an attempt to unify the various areas of my practice, I dedicated my Master's Project to developing the idea of "speculative illustration". 

Speculative fiction is defined as any story that poses a "what if?" question, and includes genres ranging from sci-fi to fantasy and various subgenres. I wanted to expand this idea to illustration, considering the application of visuals to storytelling. My aim was to create a way of making in which text and image are equally balanced, both needing to be "read" to understand the story, neither more important than the other.

In exploring the possibilities of speculative illustration, I created three case studies that explored my ideas and possibilities. To expand upon my thinking and development behind the work, I paired these case studies with a guide book which breaks down the thought processes, successes and improvements that could be implemented in this way of storytelling.

I created these case studies based on sci-fi short stories I had written: 'High Noon' set on a tidally locked planet, 'New Life' set on a terraformed Mars and 'Haverthorn' set on a free space colony. In each one, I explored how visual language can play with written language, experimenting with various forms included maps, posters, scientific diagrams, documents, typographic features, unconventional formatting, alongside illustrations.

I would like to continue developing this form of storytelling, pushing the possibilities of pairing text and image.

Below, I have included tests that did not make the final cut but were instructive in developing my ideas and visual language, as well as being visually appealing outcomes in and of themselves.