Responses by Mark Wynne, designer.
Background: For Matthew Seiji Burns’s debut novel Process, which is set in the dark heart of Seattle’s tech startup world, we wanted to make an immersive book that didn’t just illustrate the story but performed it, almost as if the narrator was communicating through visuals as well as words. The protagonist, Lucas, is a young man driven by an animalistic need to find outsized success creating the next unicorn tech company. His days are riddled with surreal meetings and strange characters, anxiety and self-torture. The book’s provocative typography and design mirrors his psychological disintegration. We hoped that this treatment would appeal to both readers of modern literature and also anyone excited by graphic design.
Design thinking: A sense of Lucas’s mind unravelling necessitated a kind of visual unravelling, and this role playing by myself became the creative engine that propelled the design. Just as Lucas’s narrative frequently oscillates in mood, tone and focus, so too would the typography break with columns, scale and form.
His inability to meaningfully connect with his colleagues or family inspired the introduction of generic stock photos to represent each character. We wanted to suggest individual characters but treat them with the blur and misregistering of depression-induced depersonalization. Sometimes, character’s names are blown up so that they are seen as graphics rather than type, their psychological significance felt rather than understood.
Challenges: Finishing it! Scrutiny of every word and sentence for possible manipulation, along with a deeply experimental approach to treatments, meant that the project took a long time. The technical specifications—two Pantones (fluoro pink and metallic rose gold), plus a wide variety of source material and finishes—meant that pre-press was also challenging, but we had supremely capable printers who did an incredible job.
Favorite details: I’m proud that the finished book exceeded our ambitious expectations. Countless times throughout the creation, I felt that I couldn’t go any further. Unlike 99 percent of design I’ve done for magazines, there were no templates, just constant experimentation.
New lessons: Over a 30-plus year career in design, I’ve always been doubtful of having developed a signature style of my own. It strikes me as ironic that, by role playing as someone else, I may have found the truest and best expression of my own design identity.
Visual influences: The British concrete poets Keith Armstrong, Bob Cobbing and Dom Sylvester Houédard were always in mind, along with Francis Bacon, Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. Important editorial designers that I’ve followed my whole career in magazines also inspired me, such as Jonathan Barnbrook, Neville Brody, Tony Brook, Stefan Sagmeister and Jim Sutherland, as well as Scott Dadich, whose WIRED article “Wrong Theory” was especially resonant.
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