The Raven

The focus of the project was to study the many folding styles and format our chapbook to one of our choosing. I took interest in Poe’s description of his “chamber door,” so I designed mine as a gate-fold to signify double doors through which the reader could view the full poem on the hidden folds.

• Mechanical Pencil

• Black 199 Medium Weight and Felt Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pens, and a Pink Crimson 127 Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pen

• Adobe Illustrator

• Adobe InDesign

Materials Used:

The Raven is the focal point of the whole poem, so I felt like it needed to be implemented in someway shape or form. After experimenting with several different placements for it, I decided to go with a symbolic/functional design by portraying it as a doorknob that the reader had to “turn” to enter the chamber and then close after finishing.

After receiving feedback on the chapbook’s original illustration, I put the file in Adobe Illustrator and made some small edits to the keyhole in the doorknob so that it stood out from the heavy black of the design. Giving the keyhole a red hue made the door appear more menacing and foreboding, and created harmony with the redness of the raven’s eye.

Once the official file was updated, it was formatted full length with careful consideration to the measurements of the folds in InDesign. The illustration was then imported and sized accordingly, as well as angled slightly with the use of Photoshop for the back panel to give the emphasis of the door being shut at the end of the poem. The bleed margins were then cut with a paper cutter and the ends were then folded by hand to create the gate fold.