ISTD chosen brief.

FLATLAND

With this brief we take a different approach. Rather than offer a theme that requires you to generate the content, we are directing you towards existing content – the Victorian (1884) novella Flatland by the English schoolmaster, Edwin A. Abbott.

You will find a mass of references and the full text freely available online.

The Brief
Your task is to produce a proposal for a new edition of Flatland that doesn’t necessarily engage with the conventions of ‘the book’ as we understand them, although it may have text
matter, pages and a cover – or not. It could be a pamphlet, a chapbook, a poster, a landscape, a happening, a dream, an installation, a text, a sound piece, an animation, a moment.

Interpret the text typographically – you can be as ambitious as you wish to be, but you must deal with the full contents of at least one chapter and show how the rest of the text would develop. There are no restrictions, no conventions, no rules, no given formats. Static work, moving image, physical, virtual, ephemeral are all up to you, as is the navigation of the piece, its viewer/reader/user engagement, its scale, simplicity, complexity, composition.

What can it become? There is a quote in the film Amadeus that says if you have four people talking at once, then that’s an argument . . . if you have four people singing at once, then that’s Opera.

Make an opera, not an argument!

Target Market
Define your market, and how you will target it, in your Strategy.

Requirements
• Research and Development
• Strategy
• Specifications/Grid(s)
• Dummy/Prototype(s)
• Presentation

Cross-reference this project brief with the ‘Assessment Criteria’ sheet. Submissions will only be accepted in one robust portfolio no larger than a2.