Stephanie Passul applies narrative structures to graphic design

Clear, cohesive, commercial graphic design is all well and good, but every now and then it’s nice to give your brain a stretch, and Stephanie Passul’s MA project, entitled The City in Six Pieces, provides the perfect apparatus for a mental workout. The project, which was developed as the final product of Stephanie’s MA at Dusseldorf’s University of Applied Sciences, explores narrative structures which have been developed as a result of the changing ways we consume information.

“The catalogue shows six visual experiments, transforming narrative structures from literature, theatre and film into editorial design,” she explains. “Every chapter visualises the story The City by Hermann Hesse, using abstract photography, and each chapter is based on another narrative structure, like the classical drama, the epic theatre or the Möbius strip.

“These structures were reduced to their formal distinctions, like units of meaning (act, scene, sequence etc.) and order (linear, non-linear). These kinds of data were used to structure the story and build the base for the design of the chapter.”

Got that? It’s a bit conceptual, but Stephanie’s neat collision of dramaturgy and graphic design manifests itself stylishly in the abstract images, while the consistency of her colour scheme pulls the publication together.