Screwjack

"Screwjack" by Hunter S. Thompson is a salacious, unsettling, and brutally lyrical book consisting of three short stories. The first story "Mescalito," is a chronicle of his first mescaline experience and the paranoia that sparked in him while alone in Los Angeles in February 1969. The second story "Death of a Poet," is a trailer-park confrontation with a dark side of a deservingly doomed friend. The third and final story "Screwjack," is an unnaturally poignant and romantic love story.

The simplistic redesign of the book demonstrates the use of typographic hierarchy, grids, detail, content, language, relationship between type and image, value and color which enable the book design to correlate with the overall theme. The use of Futura as a display text offers clean and concise messaging, while the use of Minion Pro as a prose text provides the reader with a clear and legible reading experience.

The stark white front and back covers mirror one another and contain a die-cut bullet hole that exposes the vibrant red interior page. The backward representation of the back cover is also reflective of the general madness that ensues throughout the book. As the reader dives further into the book, the story becomes increasingly mad, deranged and chaotic. The treatment of typography reflects this chaos by gradually changing its position on the page. The end of the book intentionally leaves entire page layouts blank, with a single paragraph or sentence. As legibility is extremely important, the chaotic treatment of type remains legible by following a grid design based on consistent style, size, color, baseline and vertical and horizontal alignment.

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