A research project based on collecting objects with a common theme and creating a deliverable based on narratives or counter-narratives observed within that collection.
For my collection, I chose to bring together a group of books by authors that had a large impact on me growing up, such as Enid Blyton, Terry Pratchett, Roald Dahl, and Jane Austen.
However, I soon realized that all the books I had collected were written by white authors and based in countries like the UK and the US, while I grew up reading them from Delhi, India.
I chose to create a set of postcards based on those books to convey the disconnect of not being white while still growing up on white literature in terms of distance.
I arranged the books on a spectrum of how alienated from my culture they made me feel and created a corresponding color scheme- it went from warmer, or closer, to colder, or more distant.
For each book, I took recurring themes or icons from the story and made it into a pattern for the front of the postcards. For example, the description of English food as seen in Enid Blyton novels always made me feel jealous and unsatisfied with my culture as a child. So, I chose food items she mentioned like sardines and scones for the cover of the most distant postcard.
Alternatively, the "close" postcards contains icons from adventure and fantasy stories like the Wind in the Willows and the Lord of the Rings that include a character that resembles me in them because they were easier to relate to as a foreign reader.
I also designed a set of stamps with illustrations taken from my "2-Minute Noodles" zine to paste on the postcards; the further or more alienating the postcard, the higher the value of the stamp and the more distanced the illustration.
This project was created with Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and hand drawn illustrations.
