'Fate' - ISTD PASS for 'The Undiscovered Country...'

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I explored the idea of the role of ‘fate’ in death. Fate is described as something that is destined to happen, turn out, or act in a particular way. What initially sparked my interest in this idea was looking at the psychology behind ‘what if’ moments, such as when you are walking past a construction site, and can’t help but think ‘what if something dropped from the scaffolding eight now’, or when you are crossing a road and think ‘what if a car comes zooming around that corner’. I have these thoughts most days, and this made me think about how quick and unpredictable death can be. I wanted to argue the point of whether or not fate plays a role in death, and make the reader question or confirm their current viewpoint on this matter.

I chose to personify my idea of fate as a stalker-like figure, hunting down his prey and presenting his kills to ‘death’, also personified as a boss or master figure to fate. I wanted to create a sense of suspense and drama in the book, and chose to do this through my choice of colour - using the raw fleshy-tones stock to represent life and the living, and through darker instances in the book and the use of black, represented fate and eventual death. I used a sans serif typeface to represent the modern day figure, the girl who is being stalked by fate. I then juxtaposed this with a serif typeface to represent fate. I chose to do this as fate is quite a historical concept, as are serif typefaces, and has been a part of greek and roman mythology and many religions for a large part of history.

I also used a visual photographic element of numbers, initially quite clearly stating the time of day, but gradually fading and becoming more and more illegible. This shows time becoming more and more irrelevant to the girl as more interruptions take place in her day. By the end of the day time is just a blur on the page, at which point a count down reveals itself from 00:03, to signify the incoming arrival of death.

As for binding, I chose to staple it along the edge, bound as single pages, then wrap the cover around the stapled text block. This gave the book enough stability and structure to stay together but not as much as it would have given had I perfect bound or coptic bound it. I chose to do this to show the unpredictability of my take on fate, and how by just pulling out one page, someones fate could be changed.