80's coloring book that I designed and produced as part of a project for my Interdisciplinary Digital Applications course.

The goal of this project was to take a brand or brands that we identified with, research them and come up with a project that showcased our findings. I decided to research 80’s characters and products that effected my life as a child and create a coloring book that was a collage of these characters and products.

First, I started the project off by collecting imagery and researching what makes up a coloring book. Through research into coloring books I found that every good coloring book has a storyline. So next, I came up with a storyline for my coloring book. I decided that the storyline would be about my journey through the land of 80’s coloring book characters. I called this land 'crayolaland' inspired by the popular brand of crayons. Then I collaged together this storyline, a 80’'s coloring book character I created to represent me and pages/characters from different 80's coloring books. I also added some project and game pages because coloring books usually include these as well. Finally, on the cover I arranged bright almost fluorescent (a 80's fad) colored pictures of characters into a grid.

The end result was a bit clunky because the illustration styles of the characters didn't quite match, but this was my intent since the clunky designs were indicative of the 80’s when computer technology was so new to designers. During this period designers and illustrators were just starting to experiment with computers and they went Photoshop crazy. Photoshop collages were everywhere and computer type was more pixilated.

Date
Summer 2003

Course
Interdisciplinary Digital Applications

Instructor
Steve Tenebrini

Printer
EPSON Photo Stylus 1280

Dimensions
Pages & Cover: 8¹⁄₁₆" x 10⁷⁄₈"
Spreads: 16¹⁄₈" x 10⁷⁄₈"

Materials
Colored Electrical Wires