The Evolution of Backpacking
The Evolution of Backpacking is a book researched, developed, written, edited, designed, printed, and fabricated by me. Primarily intended as an exercise in layout design and information hierarchy, The Evolution in Backpacking became a labor of love exploring the rich design history of backpacks and what grew into the outdoor community that is backpacking today.
Designed in Adobe InDesign and printed on Xerox VersaLink C8000
Spreads
Below are the final digital spreads from The Evolution of Backpacking created in Adobe InDesign. Created to highlight the design history of backpacks in order to better understand what has contributed to modern backpacking packs. Throughout the process of a semester with my professor and peers giving me feedback and working on how to develop and manipulate the grid on my page to create variety within chapters but a consistent feel throughout the entire piece.
Color-picking from the images chosen after they were placed in the layout allowed me to create a color palette that emulated the atmosphere of the outdoors. The typefaces used are Lust Type (main body and titles) and Roboto (captioning and timeline). All images sourced from ArtStor, public domain, or the websites of the companies and individuals featured.
Final Book
The final book was created in the accordion style measuring at 10.5” by 7.5”. I finished the book with a two piece cover made from large format photo paper and mylar. The book rests at about 0.75” thick and can be read like a traditional book or opened fully as an accordion.
Images below highlight the physical book and final construction printed on a Xerox VersaLink C8000, scored and cut by hand, and assembled with permanent double sided tape.
Ideation
The Evolution of Backpacking was designed from a prompt from my professor asking us to create a book about anything we wanted. My love for the outdoors and passion for the design of gear that enabled people to enjoy them let me to initially plan for a book about backpacking packs and their design at one of my favorite gear companies in the industry, Osprey Packs. After performing initial research and discovering a rich design history, I decided to shift to the backpack in general, zooming out to a wider subject.
The sketches below are my initial ideation of how I wanted to approach my layout design before moving to Adobe InDesign. I knew I wanted strong imagery and natural, calm color to dominate my design and highlight nature at the center of the entire piece.
Construction
After finalizing the first draft of spreads, I printed out pages to size to create a first draft of my book. This was an opportunity to test color, check typeface sizes, improve upon current layouts, and practice the construction of the physical book. The Evolution of Backpacking was fabricated in the style of an accordion style book which required precise cuts, taping, and alignment in order to function properly and lay flat when closed. After this initial book, I took notes on how I wanted to improve both in construction and design and then went back to InDesign before printing and making the final book.
