During my work on "Voor Wie het Zien wil" for museum het Markiezenhof, I was asked to contribute to a different project, writing pages for a book of secrets, which would allow visitors to learn secrets about items that might not get a full exhibition of their own, or already had one in the past.
Initially, I had to find what illustrative style I wanted to go with, so I did a bunch of visual experiments, drawing one object in various different styles, until I settled on one my colleagues and I liked best.
Wanting these pages to look hand-inked, I developed a specific method to making them.
I began by looking up information about the object, and collecting or taking photos of it. I would then write the accompanying text, and make a digital mockup of each page's layout.
I would then print out the mockup, and use a lightbox to trace each page by hand using pen and ink, sometimes multiple times. This would turn the digital mockup into the hand-drawn page
(Note the printed out digital mockup towards the end)
After the ink of the pages dried, I would scan them in so I could digitally correct any issues, such as ink spots in places where they shouldn't be, or creases in the paper. I could also make adjustments in the positioning of each drawing and text by digitally separating the elements.
My own handwriting is admittedly not the clearest, so to ensure consistency and readability for viewers, I developed my own custom font by hand writing each letter and symbol, scanning them in, and using a computer program to turn it into a working digital font which I could then use in the mockups.
Hand-written alphabet to turn into custom digital font
A hand-inked page directly after scanning
These finished digital pages would be used by the museum in an interactive, projected book, that allowed viewers to read them.
Photographing one of the objects in the city archive
