Mannahatta, a book design.

This is a large book; it looks, feels, and is heavy, with hard cover, thick paper, and lots of illustrations. From the first glance it commands respect, seriousness, but also playfulness from the cover design.

This design conveys that something interesting and maybe unexpected will happen to a place that most everybody is familiar with: the City of New York, Manhattan in particular. This is achieved by the title and the map that is placed across the whole front cover. The title is written in large capital letters: MANNAHATTA. We know it sounds familiar, but maybe not. It is intriguing. Then under Mannahatta in smaller capital letters it leaves no doubt what we got: A Natural History of New York City. The other prominent design feature is the map. It is separated in two sections: the upper part is the “normal” view of today's built up metropolitan city, but the bottom part shows the city as a lush green area with hills, open spaces, and wilderness. So the title of the book, as well as the picture already starts to tell the story that is unfolding in the book. However, because they used the map this way it separates the page in two right at the middle. It is not always the most appealing design to look at. Additionally, they used this separation line to guide the letters of the title that is centered, but they placed the author's below in the middle of the “bottom” map. It makes the name float within this space that gives an unsettling feeling. Perhaps they should have used the rule of thirds in the division of the map, and place the title and the authors name closer to each other. The book designer has a constraint, the size, the print, the background of the book, but not all was used to the maximum possibility here.

Overall this is a very beautifully made book. The map illustrations are amazing inside the book just as the front cover. It definitely satisfies the expectations. It was made to last, and it was made to start conversations around the table in good company.

Exercise for movie analyzing

In the movie, Being Julia, there are several technical choices that are constant throughout the movie strongly determining its feel. The story portrays the life of a successful theater actress, Julia Lambert, at the end of the 1930’s London. Julia (Annette Bening) is a romantic and sentimental, but also a confident and intelligent woman who wants to be in the center of attention. She is courted and pampered by almost every other character in the movie. Julia is an actress and sometimes she has trouble to distinguish “real” life from acting on stage. This brings out a lot of melodramatic moments in the film.

This melodrama is portrayed well by the film director, Istvan Szabo's choices of color, light, shade, costume, prop, location, and camera shot. As this is a period piece the director used a soft lighting on the characters; and there is a warm, pastel beige color throughout the scenes, just like an old photograph. The costumes and props reflected the correct time, and they also exhibited subdued colors. Bold red colors are used only in the theater shots. The lines are well balanced in the shots and Szabo is using the rule of thirds well to emphasize the characters, and build interests in the scenes. For example, in one scene Julia and the butler are framed by the porch and a column in the upper right corner, while her lover, Tom, and the chauffeur stand to the bottom left. It shows playfulness, but also balance: the witnesses to the courtship make this scene comical, but the strong framing of the characters indicate Julia's confidence in life. The framing is also constant; mostly Szabo uses medium close up shots, bringing the characters close to the viewers. Wide shots of the orchestra and the side boxes emphasize the theater's grandeur. The very last shot is the only exception to balance, because the frame cuts out Julia’s shoulders at the neck.

Framing and shot choices also helped the main scene of the movie to stand out. Here Julia is about to sabotage an otherwise well rehearsed scene in a play to revenge an upcoming young actress who slept with both Julia's former lover and her husband. The outcome is a hilarious, sensational act that fires up the whole theater and utterly humiliates her nemesis. Julia shows that there is no-one better than her on stage and she proves herself that she can go on. To accommodate this scene, the film director used close ups mixed with wide shots on the actors on stage with the theater audience in the background; he shot away to different audience members, and then used wide shots to cover the whole theater again. With these many camera angles, and framing he created excitement and tension, leading to suspense.

The camera movements and storytelling are steady and slow, indicating a life of ease, idyll, and peace just before World War II. Reflecting Julia's sentimentality and intelligence, the director's techniques, conventional camera angles and frames gave the movie a constant feel of ease as well as tension, romance as well as drama. It gave authenticity of life in 1938 London throughout the entire film.

Image source: http://www.cineclub.de/filmarchiv/2005/being-julia.html