Ex Libras I

“From the Library of” Illustrator Imitation Bookplate

For this UC Davis design project, the other students and I were asked to create a bookplate with the words “Ex Libras,” which is Latin for “From the Library of,” as well as our names all based on a pre-established list of iconic visualizations. I chose to base my first bookplate on the Sex Pistol’s Never Mind the Bullocks album cover.

This project was an interesting one for me, as normally I find a sense of comfort in the constructive lines of the Swiss Style grid, but the Never Mind the Bullocks album cover was notable for beautifully breaking the constraining characteristics of the grid and I sought to pay proper tribute to its wild and unorthodox layout. My placement and design choices did not have much rhyme or reason behind them, which I think made it all the more fun and strange for me. One of the only constraints I chose to give myself was to leave the words in order going from top to bottom, as I still wanted the main statement of the project, “Ex Libras Emily Claire Anger,” to be legible and understandable. I also chose to stick to the original color place of pink, yellow, and black because I found it to be very bold and iconic, but other than that, it was enjoyable to mess around with the different combinations of typefaces that I could create.

Normally being a perfectionist, this project provided an excellent opportunity for me to experiment with the range of typefaces and shape tools in Adobe Illustrator in order to break out of my comfort zone to create this “ransom-note style” composition and have a little fun.

Adobe CC Illustrator

One quality color print, 10” x 10”