Thread by @formerborgs

OKIE DOKIE HERE'S THE FIRST OF MY NEW #Wolf359Wednesday DESIGN THREADS! each week i'll be talking abt the book's design process until we get to STLV 📖 thank you everyone for your kind words so far about the design :)

first up: let's talk about the standard LCARS pages! 🧵⤵ https://t.co/HgcP8j8ZoL

LET'S START FROM THE BEGINNING WITH BUILDING BLOCKS !!! back in @february when i was first approached abt this project, @Andy3E said he expressly wanted to incorporate LCARS into the page layout for a 6.5x9.5" book – specifically TNG-era LCARS. let's look at some 👁reference👁!

unfortunately, the problem with a lot of TNG-era LCARS displays is that, since it wasn't expressly designed (nor intended to be used) like a "conventional book," i didn't have a whole lot of reference for how to handle body text. as a result, i had to do some✨ VISUAL RESEARCH ✨

i took inspiration w/ TNG/DS9-era technical manuals, historical nonfiction interiors, and my most recent/fun acquisition: an actual trek-licensed compsci book! after all: if we were incorporating LCARS into this a longform text body, i needed to make sure each page was balanced.

this was one of the first thumbnails/references @Andy3E sent me WRT to how he wanted the text body to look. it gave me a fantastic foundation to build on top of (AND THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD GIVE YOUR ARTISTS/COMMISSIONERS REFERENCE/THUMBNAILS)!

one thing about LCARS is that, sometimes, it's an interface that lends it easy to just add "shapes to fill space:" AKA it's visually cohesive and balanced, but the shapes/panes themselves don't serve a purpose. so i wanted to try and see if i could design some practicality!

the main idea for the "section tabs" that show your progression throughout the chapter came from another project i work on: almost real, the spec bio zine series! every tab begins to "highlight/stick out" for every chapter you reach, and from there i started to incorporate that!

these tabs help you keep a mental note about how far you are in the chapter, even if they aren't expressly numbered! we'll get into The Books' Other Kinds of Pages more in future weeks, but you can see these tab indicators in the non-LCARS pages too!

you don't wanna keep those visual bars for EVERY page, though; you wanna have the reader associate those section tab pages with the beginning of a new part! the body text pages are a simple banner with the chapter number/name, with the corresponding color as their page tabs.

SPEAKING OF CORRESPONDING CHAPTER COLORS !!!! here's the evolution of my book-wide color palette!! i used the ToC index page to kinda plot out the color direction rather than create a palette on a separate canvas (partially so i could see how the colors looked next to each other)

ever baller artist who did 359's LCARS maps @IllustratesSte lent me to working off the base palette from the non-alert LCARS, and used these base four colors to ensure there'd be a visual coherence throughout the book between maps and text bodies! :)

the chapter colors were chosen very intentionally! next few chapters will get into my thought process behind each one :)

ch1/first contact: a "standard/cool" LCARS purple, to represent complacency
ch2/new providence: a darker hue, the color of "scooped soil," a somberness

ch3/earth: a richer purple/fuchsia to signify "wealth," prosperity, rising from ch2's darker hue foreshadowing the coming emergency/what's happening far away
ch4/locutus: uhhh yellow alert everyone, they took picard and he's now a borg, uhhh oh no
ch5/wolf 359: OH FUCK RED ALERT

ch6/sector 001: still red alert, but blood has been spilled. it's drying, it's darkening, and it's coming this way
ch7/recovery: THE BORG CUBE'S IS DESTROYED! we're chillin out, but we're NEVER returning to that ch1 purple. a lowering crisis, but hits like wolf 359 leave scars

ch8/aftermath: brighter/"more polished" than ch1's purple, a little sleeker and packing a bigger visual punch
ch9/coda (and the preface/appendices!): PIC-era LCARS, to signify the different eras these chapters take place in!

these designs/colors escort you thru the book as much as the body text does. information — and the communication of it therein — can be its own art. to surmize, i recently saw this quote from the portland art museum's "color line: Black excellence on the world stage exhibit:"

AND THAT'S IT FOR MY FIRST WOLF 359 WEDNESDAY !!! tube in next week (on an actual wednesday, it's wednesday Somewhere rn) for ANOTHER design process thread, thanks for takin a gander, and GO READ WE HAVE ENGAGED THE BORG 🤖✨

GOOD MOOOORNING did everyone see my first #Wolf359Wednesday thread :)