The second project asked us to create a book based on the poems we were given. The poem I was assigned was “The Revolution will not be televised.”
First of all, the author, creative background and culture of this poem were investigated by consulting materials.
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is a poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron.The song’s title was originally a popular slogan among the 1960s Black Power movements in the United States.Its lyrics either mention or allude to several television series, advertising slogans and icons of entertainment and news coverage that serve as examples of what “the revolution will not” be or do.
Content Analysis
Next, I highlighted the words that I didn’t quite understand in the poem, which is a nine-paragraph poem that describes advertisements, movie stars, politicians, etc. The rhythm of the whole song fluctuates, expressing the author’s emotions in different stages. Based on my understanding of the poem, I summarized the contents of each paragraph. For instance, In the first paragraph, the poem tells people not to stay at home, but to receive information from the outside world. In the second passage, the theme of “blinding” is that politicians hide cruel images such as war and only give people the information they want them to get.In the last paragraph, the author repeats the lyrics to express his feelings, expressing his hope for the future and calling on people to dare to pursue the truth.
My interpretation
This poetry is called on people not to believe the lies of the media. They don’t care about spreading the truth.
Preliminary ideas
- Because the lyrics”The revolution will not be televised” is repeated throughout the poem. My first thought was to try to elevate this poem in a compelling way for lyrics.
2. The rhythm of each section of this song is different, and I want to use different colors to represent the Hertz of different melodies. To show the emotion of the poem.
In the tutorial on Wednesday, after communicating with Jackie, I decided that the target population of this project was the elderly. Electronic publishing was chosen as the final presentation form of the project.
User group：People over the age of 65 who get their news from television.
Sketches
Because the target users for the elderly group, in the choice of color can not choose too bright colors.
After re-adjusting the design idea, I chose to extract the key words of each paragraph and drew different illustrations to express the feelings of each paragraph.
Design
① Cover cover design
The cover features a silhouette of the author based on an album of the poem.
② Content layout design
I divided the main format of the e-book into two parts. On the left is my illustration based on my understanding of each poem, and on the right is the content of each poem.
In the Tutorial, Jackie suggested to me that the poems should have some Topography and keywords, rather than simply listed in words. At the same time, cover should not choose too bright color background color.
Iteration
I began to iterate, redesigning the layout of each page, highlighting key words in each paragraph, and summarizing the theme of each paragraph.
The page display
The theme of the first paragraph is “Escape”, and the illustration shows the content of the first paragraph.
The second paragraph shows politicians covering up bad news, such as the war, so that people cannot receive it.
The third paragraph shows some metaphorical content in the lyrics, such as red lips, advertising slogans and so on. Show people that revolutions aren’t always nice and sexy.
In the fourth paragraph, people’s revolutionary consciousness is being eroded by the message conveyed by capital, and the message conveyed by television needs to be reformed.
The next page shows images depicting scenes of black people being despised and oppressed. The flags and icons mentioned in the poem are also extracted.
The theme of this page is awakening, which tells the story of the awakening of women’s consciousness as a symbol of the rise of the revolution.
This paragraph describes the author’s helplessness to the people can not receive information channels to promote revolutionary ideas.
This page expresses that people should be full of confidence and hope for the revolution through the metaphor of moonlight and tornado in the lyrics.
The third paragraph shows some metaphorical content in the lyrics, such as red lips, advertising slogans and so on. Show people that revolutions aren’t always nice and sexy.
Animation effects
At the same time, I designed some animations of the illustration and edited it into a video to show the poem.
Design specification
The target group of this project is the elderly people who get news through watching TV. In terms of design style, black and white colours are mainly adopted. Through the form of illustrations, the content of each paragraph of the poem is displayed, making the illustrations seem like endless frames of TV pictures, hoping that the audience can feel the historical background of the poem through the work and get a better emotional experience.
Video display
I made a simple cut of the song and used it as background music for the video.
Scan the QR code to view the ebook.
Thanks for watching！