Personal project

It Gets Worse

An interactive touch-sensitive publication about the hidden tragedies of North Korea.

Left image: Album cover for Shakira Oral Fixation, where Shakira leans against a tree wear only a branch covers her chest, with a bare midriff. She holds an apple, and a child reaches out to her from the tree.

Right image: Album cover for Shakira Oral Fixation that was marketed in the Middle East. It still had the same photo for the original cover, but the single branch over her chest was duplicated and Photoshopped to completely cover her body.

Project origins

The project's theme revolved around Misinformation. Early in my research, I stumbled upon altered advertisements specifically tailored for the Middle East market to avoid "overly sexual imagery."

This led me to further researching censorship practices in non-Western countries. Due to time constraints, and personal interest I decided to concentrate solely on North Korea.

What was involved

This ambitious project set to showcase my varied skillset and how physical objects can interact with digital and animated material.

The sixty page publication was not only written and designed by myself, but also involved animating 14 supporting animations.

For the physical book I designed a custom cover to embed an Arduino board, screen-printed conductive paint, and bound the pages using conductive thread to allow for touch sensitivity.

I worked closely with Dr. Indae Hwang to complete the circuitry, coding and Touch Designer aspects. Whites Law Bindery assisted with printing the cover.

A spread of It Gets Worse that details electricity use between North Korea and South Korea. North Korea uses a lot less which is demonstrated by an overhead night image where North Korea is basically pitch black compared to a very bright South Korea.

An image of Shannon Towell touching a touch sensitive point in the book and activating an animation on the connected monitor.

An early iteration of the book to test the concept (where it was very illustration focused).

The Arduino board with soldered wires that makes the book work.

An early iteration of the book to test the concept.

An image of the book during testing where the cover had not been completely assembled.

End results

This publication gave me infinite panic attacks. It also gave me a solid direction for the area of design I wanted to work in.

It is undoubtedly one of the main reasons I secured my role at Sandpit, where I was able to do this kind of work full time.

Personal project

It Gets Worse

Project origins

What was involved

End results

Pages