The Design Macabre by Hamza Salar

The Design Macabre

THE

DESIGN MACABRE A Graduate Graphic Design Thesis by Syed Hamza-Salar Hassan for ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena CA Fall 2021–Spring 2022

Acknowledgements

Introduction Deliverable

The Design Macabre The Logo Color and Typography Core Tenet Posters Retrospectives Speaker Series Social Media / Make Your Mark Events Website Small Press Books Merchandise

Research

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Research Overview Reading Summaries Interview: Michael Chemers Interview: Angela Riechers Projected, Printed Fear Case Study: Vampires Case Study: Zombies Case Study: Werewolves Case Study: Ghosts

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Zine: 30 Seconds, 30 Monsters Poster: The Story of Vampires Design Explorations

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Process

List of References About The Author / Colophon

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The Design Macabre

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements Foremost, I would like to express gratitude to my thesis advisors Professor Jennifer Sorrell and Professor Michael Neal for their continuous support of my thesis research and work. Without their enthusiasm, motivation and patience, this thesis would not exist. I would also like to thank ArtCenter faculty Sean Adams, River Jukes-Hudson, Simon Johnston and Stephen Serrato for their feedback on and generous support of the work done towards the completion of this thesis project. My sincere thanks to Michael Chemers, Angela Riechers, Ethan Gladstone, Art Chantry and Colm Geoghegan for sharing their insights, comments and experiences that contributed to the research component of this thesis. I thank my fellow thesis pod members Chang Gao, Erin Georgia Son, Zhuo Cao, Yingda Shang, Sijin Zhu and Rachel Wu for their feedback during thesis development. I also extend thanks to my ArtCenter cohorts Christine Bobae, Michelle Lin and Jillian Stiles for their additional feedback and support. Lastly, I would like to thank my family and close friends for their constant love and support during my time at ArtCenter, without whom this achievement would not have been possible.

Introduction

INTRODUCTION We are surrounded by monsters. They are in the films and television shows we watch, the video-games we play and the stories we read. They are the inhabitants of innumerable campfire stories and childhood fairytales. Even after the credits roll or the book has been closed, they linger in our minds and dreams, inviting us to reckon with the impossible. Monsters, in this respect, are a compelling subject of study and this is coming from someone who, as a child, used to avoid anything to do with them. I was terrified of them, yet I couldn’t help but get on Wikipedia and read whatever I could about them. It was a grim fascination, like driving by an accident on the side of the road. I was scared but at the same time, utterly enthralled. During my undergraduate studies at University of California, Santa Cruz, I became close friends with someone who lived and breathed monsters. They made me see them not something to be scared of but to embrace and readily learn from. It led me to taking an elective on Monster Studies where I studied them in greater detail. I gained a better grasp of their influence not just on me but on people who sought to extensively understand what it is that makes them so compelling. I became acquainted with the impossible. No matter how much we study or discover about monsters, there’s always an element of mystery, something new to uncover. There were questions I wanted answers for, such as “why do we surround ourselves with monstrous imagery?” and “why do vampire movies use bloody, drippy typography?” When the time came to pick a topic for my thesis at ArtCenter, I saw it as an opportunity to unpack those questions by studying monsters through the lens of graphic design. I did so by speaking with numerous people who have studied or did work on monsters. I did extensive research on monstrous images—their use of tropes, typography and color—to make sense of how they communicate monstrosity visually. Peeling back the layers, my understanding, along with the scope of my inquiry, deepened. In searching for an answer to those questions, I came across new ones. The most pressing one was “how can I meaningfully put this research to use?” It made me reflect on what is possible and impossible as someone entering the field of graphic design; the aspirations and fears that emerge from such a field and all those adjacent to it. These emotions or wants found a medium through monsters, ultimately becoming the deliverable you will see in the following pages. I hope you, the reader, find in these pages useful insights to navigate around the things that frighten and enthrall you, that you may find a way to break through towards something new, something that was once thought impossible.

Deliverable

THE DESIGN MACABRE The Design Macabre is a collective for designers, artists and creative built upon the framework of monstrosity. This framework frames monsters as an agent of expression and creativity, beings with the unique ability to Terrorize, Teach and Transform people through their ambiguity, resilience and limitlessness. The adoption of this monstrous framework can help creative people push the limits of their craft and creativity to the next level. The inspiration behind this framework is research done in Monster Studies, an academic field that explores monsters through the lens of literature, psychology and sociology. The study of monsters in those fields have led to a deeper understanding of how they influence the way we act and think at an individual and collective level. The product of such exploration informs the main purpose of The Design Macabre; to show how one can take such understanding surrounding monsters and apply it to their respective creative practices both conceptually and practically. Based on this framework, The Design Macabre aims to equip its members with the knowledge and insights necessary to create the kind of work they want to make, without fear or limits. It also aims to bring together like-minded people in both physical and online contexts where experiences and support are shared, ideas are spread and transformation can occur. Like the monsters that inspire it, The Design Macabre exists in constant flux, evolving with the needs of the members it serves. These deliverables showcase the breadth of possibility its design system and purpose offers, the various ways this monstrous collective can become a source of inspiration, a banner to unite under and a means to break free of limits.

Opposite: 3D render of The Design Macabre’s logomark.

CORE TENETS

1. THE DESIGN MACABRE is diving deep into the unknown and coming back changed. 2. THE DESIGN MACABRE is an ear pressed against the heart of culture. 3. THE DESIGN MACABRE is a constantly shifting shadow. 4. THE DESIGN MACABRE is smashing the idols and ideals of design. 5. THE DESIGN MACABRE is an axe looking for walls to tear through. 6. THE DESIGN MACABRE is desire, danger and deliverance manifest. 7. THE DESIGN MACABRE is the Other; politically, economically, racially, sexually.

Deliverable

THE LOGO

The official mark of The Design Macabre, Janus. It is a shadowed face, representing the conscious and subconscious of our psychology and culture.

Deliverable

THE

DESIGN MACABRE

Above: The mark can also be placed in a lock-up with the name of the collective rendered Below: The mark is modular, allowing for the creation of repeating patterns at a variety of scales.

Deliverable

In addition to being a repeatable element, the mark also has room for customization. It’s an opportunity for members of The Design Macabre to have a deeper affinity with the collective.

COLOR AND TYPOGRAPHY Yowling Yellow Hex: #fffa0e RGB: 255, 250, 14 CMYK: 5, 0, 93, 0

Gruesome Green Hex: #89ce40 RGB: 137, 206, 64 CMYK: 0, 50, 0, 96

Cruel Crimson Hex: #ad1515 RGB: 173, 21, 21 CMYK: 22, 100, 100, 15

Lurid Lime Hex: #bfce40 RGB: 191, 206, 64 CMYK: 30, 5, 93, 0

Brutal Burgandy Hex: #ac1457 RGB: 172, 20, 87 CMYK: 27, 100, 47, 9

Inspired by monster movie posters from the 1930s–50s, the colors of The Design Macabre are vivid and alluring to showcase the expressiveness of the monstrous.

Monstrous Magenta Hex: #992799 RGB: 153, 39, 153 CMYK: 47, 96, 0, 0

Gory Gold Hex: #ffbf0e RGB: 255, 191, 14 CMYK: 0, 27, 99, 0

Violent Violet Hex: #572799 RGB: 87, 39, 153 CMYK: 82, 98, 0, 0

Deliverable

BIRCH

TRADE GOTHIC The headline typography is set in Birch Std, a condensed face whose tall stature and pointed serifs evoke the larger than life quality of monsters. It is complimented with a gothic-styled sans-serif used in body copy and captions.

CORE TENET POSTERS

One of the core applications of The Design Macabre is a poster series depicting the core tenets of the collective. The use of 3D typography creates a striking image that draws the viewer’s eye.

Deliverable

These tenet posters will primarily be seen in public contexts through wildposting to capture the attention of potential audiences.

Deliverable

In addition to typography, the posters also showcase the collective’s mark as a 3D element in the visual system.

Deliverable

RETROSPECTIVES

To educate members of The Design Macabre with the visual and conceptual vocabulary of monsters, there will be a series of retrospectives that take a deep dive into common archetypes seen in media and their evolution over the years.

Deliverable

SPEAKER SERIES

To promote an understanding about how monsters can teach us how to be creative, The Design Macabre will host a speaker series, featuring experts from across discipines to discuss how monsters have played a role in their process and lives.

Deliverable

In addition to the Speaker Series, retrospectives on past creatives who have worked with monsters will also be held to celebrate and learn from their contributions. These posters would be placed in places of interest such as museums and colleges.

Deliverable

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media will be used to attract new members and keep existing ones current with upcoming events and everything else related to The Design Macabre.

Deliverable

MAKE YOUR MARK

Members of The Design Macabre can make their experience more ownable using Mark Your Mark, a web-based app that lets members create a custom version of the collective’s mark for use in materials.

EVENTS

The Design Macabre can also host larger events such as conferences where like-minded creatives can network, attend presentations and workshops related to applying the monstrous.

Deliverable

Members can be gifted a canvas bag with The Design Macabre related swag. They can also sport their custom mark on a lanyard at events.

WEBSITE

The visual language of The Design Macabre is extended to the design of its website, where one can learn more about what the collective has to offer. It is also where one can purchase merchandise through the online store.

Deliverable

SMALL PRESS BOOKS

Given it’s association with monsters, The Design Macabre can offer small press editions of notable monster and horror related books to audiences. The dust jackets employ the collective’s 3D typography whereas the interior hardcover sports a bespoke mark.

Deliverable

MERCHANDISE

As a way for members to proudly represent The Design Macabre, merchandise such as canvas bags, pins, badges and t-shirts will be available.

Deliverable

Research Overview

RESEARCH OVERVIEW

Opposite: L: Detail from poster for “I, Frankenstein” (2014) R: Detail from poster for “Frankenstein” (1931)

From the stuff of folktales to blockbuster phenomenon, monsters hold a place in and across cultures. This prevalence has spawned a wealth of visual material that, if one were to look closer, can lead to a better grasp of how people perceive the world. Monsters reveal insights into beliefs and fears rooted in our psychology and culture. An understanding of how they manifest and showcase such aspects can help creatives better represent and address the present anxieties of their audiences. It seems like wherever we look, there’s monsters to be found. We see them in media like movies, television and video games. They loom large on billboards, posters and bus stops on the street and haunt costume ship aisles and Netflix queues. They are a part of the larger visual vocabulary in culture. Despite this prominence, how monsters communicate aspects of culture through their form, color and associated typography has not been explored with much depth. Why is blood used in typography related to vampires? Why does a poster for a zombie movie disgust and entice us instead of pushing us away? Questions like these, along with a personal fascination with monsters, are why I’m pursuing this topic. Beyond such reasons, what is there to care about when it comes to monsters? Monsters, arguably, are as old as history itself and have been a subject of interest for cultures dating as far back as the Sumerians. These ancient accounts about monsters—with their descriptions of unusual and improbable animals and people—provide perspective to ancestral understandings (and misunderstandings) about the world. They served as a way to talk about harsh realities of sickness and death, fears and aspirations. The monster in this light serves as a shared visual metaphor, or as scholar Jeffrey Jerome Cohen describes it, “an embodiment of a cultural moment; a time, feeling or place.” This embodiment, Cohen suggests, is what makes monsters relevant today. Frankenstein’s monster, for instance, still resonates with fears around disturbing the natural order of things using science and technology just as it did back in 1818. Godzilla, born out of the trauma of nuclear destruction, persists as a cultural reminder of a catastrophe whose effects reverberate to this day. Monsters have, in some cases, adapted to better suit the current moment. The shambling zombie now sprints with reckless abandon, as our anxieties about death and contagious diseases factor not just lethality but also its rate. Monsters that continue to demonstrate the concerns of the people and cultures they stalk will remain relevant. The ones that don’t remain curious historical footnotes. The work of a creative, in a way, is the task of being relevant to an intention and audience. It’s understanding a target audience and employing visual strategies that nudge them to think, feel or act a certain way. Monsters have achieved similar effects through audience participation, emerging from the collective cocktail of inherited self-preservation instincts filtered through selective sieves of culture. Understanding how monsters affect people may help designers better understand them, looking into the dark to reach deeper solutions to today’s ongoing problems.

An understanding of the visual design elements used to convey monstrosity provides insight into beliefs and fears rooted in psychology and culture.

It can help creatives better represent and address the present anxieties of the audiences they design for.

Reading Summaries

READING SUMMARIES “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen In “Monster Culture (Seven Theses), Cohen proposes a methodology of reaching a deeper understand of culture through monsters, broken down into seven main points or theses. His first thesis (“The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body”) establishes monsters as something that reveals aspects about a time, feeling and place within culture, a signifier for something other than itself. He unpacks the idea of the monster as something lacking a fixed form, an unstable presence that changes based on the context they inhabit (“The Monster Always Escapes”). This inherent instability makes monsters resistant to classification or logic (“The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis”) and forces one to look beyond what is ordinary towards something that is different. This difference—of culture, politics, race economics and sex—forms the means through which cultures represent and emphasize otherness, identify and create monsters (“The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference”). As such, monsters serve as a warning against threading into unfamiliar territories, feed into the potential dangers of crossing the social, geographical and sexual borders as defined by culture. Anyone who tries to trespasses does so at risk of either being harmed or transformed into a monster themselves (“The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible”). The uncertainty and fantasy surrounding monsters lends them to escapist fantasies; by existing outside culture, they are free to act as such. This enticing aspect forms a part of why people allow for monstrous representations to flourish in media, in liminal spaces where they can be both feared and sought after (“Fear of the Monster is Really a Kind of Desire”). Monsters, Cohen ultimately states, are a kind of proxy, messengers who return bearing understandings of the world that can flip ours on its head, forcing us to broaden our perspective on the things we know and on those we don’t (“The Monster Stands at the Threshold…of Becoming”). “How to Approach Monsters” by David D. Gilmore

Opposite: Cover Art of the graphic novel adaptation of Stephen King’s film“Creepshow”, 1982

David Gilmore frames monsters in terms of how they relate to the Epic Hero as characterized by mythologists such as Joseph Campbell. They are the foil, the obstacle in the way for the hero to conquer on behalf of humanity. Monsters, according to Gilmore, serve as existential threats, avatars of chaos that deter progress in favor of destruction, “metaphor[s] for all that must be repudiated by the human spirit” (12). Though they exist outside humanity, the space they inhabit is one “apart from, but parallel to and intersecting”, existing side by side and occasionally crossing paths (12). This crossing take form of a narrative as old as recorded history, where the monster mysteriously appears, wreaks havoc, is challenged and forced to retreat. Interpretations of monsters in post-modern theory take the mythological standpoint as the basis for interpretations regarding cultural outcasts, western bourgeois society and Marxism. These interpretations have shown monsters to be a way of reframing understanding about the world, that when one views or creates monsters, they are “recombining aspects of empirical reality” (Jackson, 1981)

Ornament and Monstrosity in Early Modern Art by Chris Askholt Hammeken and Maria Fabricius Hansen Ornamentation—derived from the Latin “ornare”, meaning “to honor” or “to praise” —is framed as a counter-weight to logical order; the familiar dichotomy of mind and body, male and female. When the scale tips towards ornament, there is a tendency for order, as characterized by structure, hierarchy, norms and worldviews, to be thrown into disarray. This balancing act, Hammeken and Hansen argue, creates instability, “a continual state of flux and flow” (21). Depictions of monstrosity, in that case, are a means for ornament to keep or upset this balance. They do so through the combination of incompatible elements and making things that are naturalistic or dynamic artificial and static or vice versa. Those transformations create flux by introducing ambiguity into recognized logic and reasoning, subverting what is expected as a way to “embrace fluctuations between…mental [and] physical realms” (25). They were also the result of artists rebelling against Christian morality and a desire to challenge uniformity and objectivity by employing ambiguous aesthetics. “Medieval Monsters” by Alixe Bovey Bovey’s article explores depictions of monstrosity in illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages. These depictions are based on past accounts concerning the world such as those by Pliny The Elder. They often adorned such texts and were used to show what was present beyond the natural, moral order of the world as understood by the people of the time. Depicted along the margins of pages, monsters were a visual reminder of the dangers of sin and immorality that stood in stark contrast against the text it surrounds, the word of God. Monsters were in this case a design element, “symbolizing the dangers…beyond the limits of Christian belief”. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide by Johanna Drucker, Emily McVarish Drucker and McVarish argue that graphic conventions are the carriers of ideological values that were used to signal the superiority or inferiority of cultures. Word-ofmouth and other various accounts gave way to assumptions about various parts of the world. The more contrary or (relatively) alien of them were subject to monstrous depictions in printed image and text, becoming a way of reaffirming the beliefs of those who sanctioned such media such as rulers and religious leaders. Advances in printing allowed for more rapid dissemination of print material, which in turn had considerable impact in spreading all manner of information to common people, be it about the righteousness of their king or about the monsters that lurked in distant, foreign lands beyond castle walls. Blood Types by Angela Riechers Riecher’s essay explores why vampires have persisted and continue to persist in media, ephemera and popular culture, suggesting that they serve as a “stunt double” for real-life issues of a particular time such as immigration, terrorism, etc (1). Whereas those problems do not have clear cut solutions, the vampire—with its set of weaknesses and ways to be killed—allows culture to deal with those messy issues. This malleable aspect of vampires is broken down by Riechers into two categories, the “Nosferatu” type and the “Dracula” type respectively. One being bestial and gruesome and the other romantic and sophisticated, the categories serve as way of positioning vampires in media, identifying the particular cultural woes they articulate as well as differentiating more “serious” monsters to less-serious one’s like Count Chocula. 60

Reading Summaries

Monster from the Id: The Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film by E. Michael Jones Jones provides a contemporary reading on monsters and horror media, where such creatures represent the failings or darker side of the Enlightenment’s effect on culture socially, economically, politically and sexually. They act as a counter-point to the push for science, industry and logic that characterized and still characterizes today, relating to aspects repressed by enlightenment thinking such as morality, faith and religion. Monsters are a concrete result of this abstract repression, “a disguised, more palatable form” of interrogating these newer modes of understanding the world. For example, while improvements in science lead to more effective medicine and treatments of illnesses, Frankenstein and his monster showcase the dangers of not defying the natural orders of life and death. This tension between the enlightenment and morality, in Jones’ view, is where the monster emerges from, a signifier of “culture [being unable] to make up its mind” (x) Selling The Movie: The Art of the Film Poster by Ian Haydn Smith Smith’s book details the evolution of movie posters in terms of their use of image and text, where the changing emphases of those elements serve as “signpost[s] of shifting attitudes”(6). The poster thus serves as a window into the cultural, societal, economic and political aspects of cinema as well as a point of convergence with the art movements of various periods. For instance, posters during the 1920’s were influenced by German expressionism and Soviet constructivism to as a way of representing the masses. A film poster, in addition to window, serves as mirror of a time and place. In regards to the poster design of Universal Studio’s horror films, Smith makes note of the use of contrast between light and dark, bold colors and “inventive insertion” of titles. Those were a way of differentiating those posters from others in addition to visually communicating the shocking aspect of those films in a way that aligned with the moralistic requirements of the Hays Code. Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix Hendrix dives into the history and evolution of horror paperbacks from the 1960’s to the 1990’s, noting particular moments related to the cultural zeitgeist that informed trends in subject matter. For instance, with the success of the novel “Rosemary’s Baby” and the controversy surrounding the Manson Family, horror novels with an occult emphasis became more widespread. The book covers prominent authors and the artists whose otherworldly paintings and illustrations for covers formed the visual identity of particular sub-genres of horror paperbacks at the time. Hendrix also offers possible explanations for why these horror paperbacks phased out of popular culture; readers found horror old and hokey compared to “thrillers” (stories inspired by true crime and serial killers), editors saw a need to cater to a wider audience to keep the lights on and the pool of book cover artists shrank as they left for greener, prosperous pastures. Of Giants: Sex, Monsters and the Middle Ages by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen Cohen explores the giant as a cultural signifier of excess. Such excess—of size, of violence, of sex—places giants outside what is considered human, as something literally and culturally larger than life. Cohen highlights the presence of giants across various contexts such as the Nephilim of the Hebrew Torah and the giants of Norse and Greek mythology. This coded excess extends beyond myth and into real-life contexts like the Lincoln Memorial, where the gigantism of President 61

Abraham Lincoln is linked with the greatness of his impact, “a public spectacle of ideological authority” for all to witness. (x) For Cohen, the giant serves as a prime example of demonstrating monstrosity as something both within and outside of culture. The sheer size—physically and figuratively—of giants forces one to shift their frame of reference; up close, one cannot behold the whole picture yet from afar, the picture in full view reveals a stark contrast of it to oneself. To make sense of giants and monsters is to constantly move back and forth between frames of understanding, of what one knows and what is lies beyond, to reach the point where they intersect and reveal a kind of truth. One such truth Cohen recognizes from this act is the prevalence of monsters, of how despite attempts to demystify them through depiction and documentation, they reappear in new forms. Unable to be banished yet unable to integrate into culture, monsters in general serve as “a kind of cultural shorthand for the problems of identity construction…[and] differences deep within the culture-bound self” (5). Type Style Finder: The Busy Designer’s Guide to Choosing Type by Timothy Samara Samara states that contemporary typefaces related to monsters and horror draw from historically dangerous time periods and older Hollywood thriller films. Typographic form and color are used to tap into the audience’s psyche, to play on ones “fears and memories of monsters, boogeymen and dangerous spirits” (56). He makes a distinction between two kinds of typefaces related to monsters. The first is “Sinister” type, which refers to the past—to periods of social upheaval and ancient superstitions—as way of communicating and evoking fear. The distorted or mottled quality of such typefaces is used to suggest age and a kind of wrongness. The second is “psychotic” type, which relates more closely to more “human” monsters such as serial killers. These typefaces suggest the fragmented mental aspect of such beings and are characterized by structural disconnects and unexpected shifts in weight and style. The use of harsh texture treatments such as photocopying and splicing also communicate a sense of not being “put together”. Horror is Good For You (and Even Better for Your Kids) by Greg Ruth Ruth makes the case for how horror and monsters in children’s media ranging from folktales to movies serve as a way to communicate aspects of childhood in a compelling and approachable way. Childhood and growing up can be a difficult time. Unfamiliar aspects of life and oneself can be daunting, and here scary tales (and the monsters in them) can provide kids the tools to cope and engage with fear of the unfamiliar in safe way. Such affordance offered by horror media also proves to be a tried and tested way for a child to better understand themselves through the repeated arc of being scared, relieved and scared once more. Additionally, monsters offer children “an honest broker” that forces children to come face to face with certain harsher realities of life. Facing such realities promotes personal growth and may even be a way of forging bonds with others whose life learning and experiences run parallel to theirs. Monsters in horror media also offer a means of coping with growing up, as the apparent differences seen in monsters may help them with the strange symptoms—physical and mental—that comes with the onset of adolescence. The Vampire: Origins of a European Myth by Thomas M. Bohn Bohn’s book takes an historical approach to vampires, drawing from various writings dating back as early as the 1700’s. He argues that vampires are a primarily European myth with no singular point of origin, a creature born of discrepancies and commonalities between states and ethnic groups. They represented fears surrounding death, the diseases they spread, the interpersonal conflicts that led 62

Reading Summaries

to it as well as unresolved social issues within communities. He posits three main functions associated with vampires during those times: 1. They suggested the possibility of receiving messages from the dead, 2. They were a bogeyman that could be eliminated through specific, controlled methods, allowing people to deal with their fears and explain irrational dangers, 3. They were a convenient excuse for marginalizing and eliminating scapegoats and people deemed to be troublemakers. Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite: The Science of Monsters by Matt Kaplan Kaplan’s focus lies in explaining why people gravitate towards monsters despite the fear and overall negative response they create. He theorizes, based on a study on why people eat spicy food done at University of Pennsylvania, that people get pleasure from negative bodily reactions when they are known to be harmless. He draws further parallels with thrill rides and extreme sports, instances where the body’s flight-or-fight response kicks into gear while the mind is aware there’s no present or immanent danger. Monsters and other such stimuli, in this sense, may be considered a matter of mastery of mind over the body. This mastery also explains why, despite our built-in response to run away from danger, some engage in risk-taking activities; risks that pay off are rewarding. Monsters exist in a part of one’s imagination where fears can be faced in a safe space, where they serve as preparation for fearful and risky encounters in reality and in the future. The past, present and future evolution of monsters, Kaplan argues, is linked with “the pace of human understanding of the surrounding world.” (13) Science provides answers—to a certain extent—behind why cultures interpreted certain signs in nature to be monstrous, why they deemed corpses to be vampires and sleep-paralysis hallucinations to be ghosts. This affects the believability in such monsters, with some falling out of the cultural subconscious. As long as they relate to the core fear that created them, monsters can continue to persist albeit in more relevant forms. From Wonder to Error: A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity by Rosemarie Garland Thomson Thomson’s chapter touches on how the appraisal of monsters and similar extra-ordinary beings relates to one’s understanding of and narrative about the world. Such defiance of what’s ordinary and predictable by these mythic creatures open the bounds of the known world, make it seem more expansive and uncertain than it seemingly is. They acted as magnets attracting the anxieties, questions and needs of culture. During times when belief in monsters was commonplace, this simultaneous opening and defiance of the known world was met with awe; danger mixed with fascination. Monsters “merged the terrible with the wonderful…[equalized] repulsion with attraction” to create a holistic narrative of how things were. This ancient assessment of monsters has, since then, changed especially in respect to modernity and freak shows of the late Victorian period. What was once marveled as a force of nature is now considered a deviation from it, their function of delivering revelations about people now reduced to entertainment. Awe turns into horror, wonder into error. Haunted: On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural Worlds by Leo Braudy Braudy argues fear is something not solely experienced at the individual level; rather, it is a cultural response to events and things that create anxieties at a collective level. A culture’s assessment of the things it’s scared of is based on history and culture, what is known and unknown. The known and unknown are tied to the inte63

rior world (the mind, body and emotion) and the exterior world (geography, borders, other life), and the intersection of these areas is where monsters emerge from and take shape. They did so in the form of words and images, spread to the masses by writers and painters during the Enlightenment. Monsters, at this point, became a way to tidily explain and resolve “diabolical” phenomena, yet questions concerning things not fitting the traditional Christian mold persisted. Their inherent irrationality and distortion of what’s known about the world made for powerful images that supplied painters with much to draw from. Monsters: Interdisciplinary Explorations in Monstrosity by Sibylle Erle & Helen Hendry Erle and Hendry argue that monsters serve as an enabler of conversations around social or intellectual problems in culture that are otherwise difficult to broach or socially unacceptable to have. This makes them potentially useful as a tool of exploration across different disciplines related to teaching, academia and practice. The metaphorical aspect of monsters sidesteps barriers to promote productive discussion about what is or isn’t morally transgressive. The productivity of such discussions emerges less so from the categorization of any given monster’s defining features but more so from their impact on culture, its ability to promote conversation around uncomfortable topics in culture people know of but refuse to bring up. This makes them, according to the authors, useful for educators as they can use monsters and monster-adjacent literature as a way to make difficult cultural topics approachable and allow students to learn to have constructive conversations around interpretation and meaning. Monsters on the Brain: An Evolutionary Epistemology of Horror by Stephen T. Asma Asma’s article dives into psychological reasons related to cultural responses to monsters and horror stories. He argues that monsters serve as virtual, dramatic representations of real-life obstacles. They do so by being associated with somatic markers—information used by one’s mind to make decisions—that are considered antisocial in culture. Recognition of such somatic markers can be interpreted by the brain in two ways, either as an affective response (fear/fight-or-flight) or an indicative response (cognitive/pattern and feature recognition). The two responses often run parallel to one another and can intersect. This may account for different reactions to monsters by people; some, upon seeing a monstrous image, become fearful whereas others may have a more objective, rational outlook. Asma points towards antisocial somatic markers being attributed to particular groups as means of promoting tribalism, racism and xenophobia. He makes the case for what he calls “Affective Replacement Theory”, where the antisocial somatic markers are reconfigured as a means of diminishing difference and instead highlighting similarities amongst seemingly disparate peoples and communities. In the case of monsters, this theory allows such fantastical creatures to become virtual, dramatic representations of ourselves, beings to sympathize and empathize with. Monsters Evolve: A Biocultural Approach to Horror Stories by Mathias Clasen Clasen makes the case for an approach towards monsters that is biocultural; one that looks both at the psychology of the human mind as well as the cultural factors associated with myth creation to provide a richer, holistic account of the significance of monsters. The biological aspect explored by Clasen involves the human mind’s ability to detect and respond to dangers in the environment. It’s an ability that has evolved into our hard-wiring as humans from dangers experienced by our ancestors. It’s why one is quick to act or feel a certain way in response to even the smallest inconsequential stimulus. When it comes to monsters, they arise biologically on 64

Reading Summaries

two fronts. The first one, according to Clasen, is salience or a general recognition of something significantly different from ourselves. Our danger-sensing abilities become more pronounced when we’re faced with the highly unusual. The second emerges as an outcome of our defense system constantly trying to keep up to date with all dangers it registers. These lead to the creation of monsters; they are entities that, through their salience, predictably and reliably trigger our mental defense mechanisms. The form they take is a way for our minds to catalogue the danger they represent in a bid to act appropriately the next time they appear. Monsters—especially of the fictional variety—use this knowledge to their advantage, using the human psyche to predictably and reliably induce particular emotional states such as fear or disgust. They further do so through the lens of culture, refined to be relevant to specific dangers and environments. For instance, the category of “werewolf” translates to whatever historically dangerous animal exists in a region, like bears in the Americas or tigers in India. By tapping into our psychology, environment and culture, monsters capture and hold our attention. Why do monsters still capture and hold our attention today? Clasen argues the mind, in order to help catalogue dangers in the environment, makes the process of discovering danger fun. Think of how, upon being spooked by something in a film, fear turns into laughter. Monsters, in this way, present themselves as surrogate experiences for non-functional behavior such as curiosity and play to better improve our danger response and, by extension, ourselves.

Interview: Michael Chemers

INTERVIEW: MICHAEL CHEMERS Why are people drawn to monsters?

It’s complicated. I think primarily, we’re drawn to the monster because it represents an opportunity for us to deal with fear. We can project our fears onto the monster. Then, by watching the monster go through its lifecycle and be destroyed, it feels therapeutic to us. But of course, it doesn’t really get rid of the fear. Whatever it is that’s causing us fear, it doesn’t really disappear when the monster is vanquished in a play or in a movie or something. We have to go back and do it again and again. An endless cycle.

Michael Chemers is a professor, Chair of the Department of Performance, Play & Design and Director of the Center of Monster Studies at University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC)

Exactly. The thing that’s causing the fear, whatever it is, was not erased by the destruction of a fake monster. For instance, I used to be terrified of werewolves to the point I couldn’t even watch a movie with a werewolf in it. Now, I love werewolves and it’s because I figured out what it was about werewolves that was scaring me. It wasn’t that I was going to be killed by a werewolf, it was that I was going to become one. That I would be that thing and possibly have that level of action and freedom to do terrible things. Once I realized that, I wasn’t scared of werewolves anymore. The monster is a potential for being immensely therapeutic. Would you say this therapeutic aspect explains the appeal surrounding monsters and horror? I think that’s the primary reason, though it’s mostly subconscious for us. We don’t know why we are so attracted to horror. Some of us are attracted to things that are strange, that other people turn away from. Those of us who are like that, I think we’re looking for insights into our own self and our own journey through life. We also like to be scared. As humans, we find being scared pleasurable, to a certain extent. It pushes your horizons, makes you more acceptable of other ways of being, other kinds of life. Horror is really good for you. It seems the way we see monsters has changed over the years, moving away from fear and towards camp and even humor. Could you explain this shift in the impact of monsters?

Opposite: Poster of “The Babdook” (2014), directed by Jennifer Kent

I’m not sure I agree with that. There’s a lot of camp and silly horror out there, for sure. Especially if you’re looking at these images behind us, these Universal horror monsters. They’re not scary anymore; they just can’t be. It’s because they were made in Hays Code times and they were very strict about violence and whatnot. I mean, I’ve seen some movies that are really scary like “The Witch”. That was a really scary movie. “The Babadook” was really scary. I think that people are still interested in being scared and still capable of being scared, but I think it’s also therapeutic to make fun of monsters as well. That can also be really fun and a great opportunity for self-discovery. The Witch is interesting because even though it’s about witchcraft, it’s more about the fear surrounding it that manifests in a variety of ways. Same thing with “The Babadook”. You never see it. You only see pictures of it in a book but you never actually see it. It’s something that manifests from the grief the 67

main character feels around their husband’s death. It haunts them. To a greater or lesser extent, all monsters are that are like that. They’re an externalization of these internal pressures that we feel. What happens when monsters no longer externalize what is internal? Do they lose their relevance? The monster has to adapt in order to stay alive. If you look at monsters from the Middle Ages, there are a lot of monsters like the Bonnacon or the Amphisbaena that are not part of our culture anymore because they failed to adapt to the new anxieties and fears that people had. Frankenstein’s monster, on the other hand, keeps adapting, keeps turning into different monsters. It’s the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. It’s the Replicants in Blade Runner. It’s Ultron in Age of Ultron. Those are Frankenstein’s monsters. They keep adapting and if it fails to do that, then it’ll disappear. People just won’t be that scared of it anymore and it won’t matter. It seems that some monsters remain relevant but also firmly rooted in the past. For instance, when one hears “Dracula”, they may think of Bela Lugosi’s portrayal. If the monster needs to adapt in order to remain relevant, then what does that mean for monsters that still persist today but are frozen in time? Poster of “The Witch” (2015), directed by Robert Eggers

Every time you encounter a monster, let’s say, every time you encounter Dracula, what you’re experiencing in that event, is that you look at the Dracula that you’re looking at right now. Whether it’s Franklin Gella or Christopher Lee, whoever is being Dracula today is in dialogue with Bela Lugosi. He is the archetype and all these other ones refer back to that, in a way. When you’re experiencing a monster, and this I think is true for any monster, you’re experiencing it in many layers. Not just the monster that you’re encountering at the moment, but every other iteration of that monster and maybe even every other iteration of any monster. You experience it four dimensionally. You’re not just there watching the thing. You’re also watching the last time you were in the movie theater as well as the first time you were in the movie theater, up till the first time you saw Dracula. It’s a dialogue built upon multiple layers of encounters. The monster becomes an evolving document of cultural contexts. Absolutely, yes. An evolving document, but it always refers back to the original one. There’s always a “Chapter One”. Much has been written about monsters in literature and cultural studies research, though it rarely goes beyond those areas. Why do you think discourse related to monsters is so niche, even though we’re constantly surrounded by monster media? It’s because people don’t take monster seriously. I think scholars don’t take monsters seriously, but I think that’s changing. We put together the Center for Monster Studies at UCSC. It just started up last year and we’re getting grants, putting out publications and people are taking the subject of monsters seriously. It’s starting to be something that people are becoming increasingly aware of. What would it take for people to believe in monsters again today? There’s a big difference in saying you don’t believe in monsters when you’re sitting in the daylight, talking to somebody over a cup of tea or something and saying, “Yeah, I don’t believe in monsters”. That’s silly, right? But then, sometimes, you’re in the middle of the night on a lonely road and you suddenly think to yourself, “Well, I don’t know if there are monsters, but if there are any, they’re probably here”. So anyone who says they don’t believe in monsters means they don’t believe in monsters right at that moment that they’re talking to you. They may believe it 68

Interview: Michael Chemers

sometimes. The monster represents ontological instability. The existence of the monster—even just the possible existence of it—jeopardizes our sense of ourselves within the framework of the universe as we know it. If that monster could possibly exist, then what am I? Who am I? Such instability can be very therapeutic. It can be very pleasurable, but it could also be very traumatic. I would say that people who say that they don’t believe in monsters, “Well, you don’t believe in monsters right now, but tonight, you might”. So, monsters are more likely to creep into one’s worldview based on the surrounding context. Yes. I think we’re going to see a lot of interesting monsters come out of the (COVID-19) pandemic, because it’s a time of heightened anxiety.

Amphisbaena Miniature Painting c. 1200

If we were to create a test environment where monsters can appear, what would that look like? The more introspective you are, the more likely it is that you’ll find a monster somewhere. Anytime you are in a heightened fear situation, you’re more likely to see monsters. I mean, look at how many ghosts people say they see all the time. Or various types of beasts and monsters that are supposed to be hiding in little corners of America, such as the Beast of Bray Road or the Sasquatch or something like that. People believe, and until they actually get found, they’re monsters. If they actually get discovered, then they become biological specimens. That’s different, right? Because the monster’s body is cultural. How can an understanding of monsters help people? If you look at a monster and you see the other, then you’re falling for the trap, the dark art of monsterization. If you see a racial other or a religious other, or an ethnic other or sexual other, then you’re looking in the wrong direction. If you look at the monster and see yourself, then you’re on the right track, because you could really discover some things about yourself. If you look at the monster and say, “Oh, I understand; I’m connected to that monster because I have those traits as well. I have sympathy for the monster”. Sympathy and empathy. The more you do that, the better person you become on the whole, because you become a more empathic person. And the most, the empathic person is the best person, the person who can feel compassion is the best person. And monsters increase our ability to feel compassion. I really believe that. It does seem people are more inclined to see the other in monsters most of the time. Yes, because of the amygdala. It’s the part of the brain that manages threat responses and it works very fast. It has to in order to manage threat response, but we can’t listen to it. We have to let that threat response move bias and then move out into the more rational way of thinking. Because it’s so easy to look at someone who’s a different skin color than you or comes from a different part of the world than you and say, “Oh, that is a monster”. It’s mapping the cultural body of the monster onto the real body of the person, which legitimizes whatever atrocity I’m going to commit against that person. That’s the dark side. Monsters can be used that way too, used either for therapeutic purposes or for persecution. There’s a technique that Stephen Asma talks about in an article of his called “Affective Replacement Theory” where you train your amygdala’s response to become nuanced, more responsive to reality and not so reactionary. It takes a long time, but it can be done. Eventually, when you see a monster, you’re attracted to it as opposed to being revolted or horrified by it. You must be experiencing that, because when you work with monsters a lot, you start to go like, “ooh, how exciting! How cool!” You want to move toward the monster instead of away from it. There are all kinds of ways that you can work around that threat response as well. You can 69

also identify with the monster. When we’re looking at Godzilla, for instance, in the first movie, Godzilla is the bad guy. But in the second movie, Godzilla is the good guy, because there’s another monster out there that’s even more horrific than him and he’s going to protect us. Godzilla eventually becomes a hero. How would you go about explaining the helpful aspects of monsters to someone who’s incredulous about them? Normally, when I talk to people, they’re not incredulous. When I talk about them, people are like, “Oh, yeah, I love monsters, you know?” and then you can get into a conversation with them, where you say, “Oh, you know, what is it about the vampire that you particularly find scary?” And then they say, “Well, it has to do with the fact that they pervert sexuality”. You have these conversations with people that makes them realize these aspects. It’s really easy to get people to understand that there’s deeper reasons why they’re scared of a particular monster, why they like a particular monster, that there’s deeper reasons than just the surface. For instance, I have a lot of young women who are intellectuals in my classes and they all seem to either like or are afraid of witches, and it’s because the witch is a woman who has come into power. If you’re an intellectual, that can be a scary prospect. You don’t even know you’re scared of it, but it manifests itself in your fear of witches. In your opinion, what is a monster that best represents today’s fears and anxieties? I am very intrigued by the Slender Man. The Slender Man is very interesting because he’s wearing a suit, doesn’t have a face and only appears online in people’s pictures. I think he’s very much a modern monster, one that has to do with our fears of surveillance, of being surveilled on when we’re online. We know we’re being watched by corporate entities that don’t have our best interests at heart, but we pretend like we’re not. We sublimate that fear, repress and suppress the fear, and then it comes out as a monster. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Interview: Michael Chemers

“The more introspective you are, the more likely you’ll find a monster somewhere.” 71

Interview: Angela Riechers

INTERVIEW: ANGELA RIECHERS For “Blood Types”—your study on different types of vampire—how did you conduct your research?

Angela Riechers is the Program Director of Graphic Design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

There’s a method called LATCH theory where there are five ways to organize information, namely “location”, “alphabet”, “time”, “category” and “hierarchy”. I would say what I did for that vampires poster was definitely “category”. I basically thought of every vampire in pop culture and on cereal boxes, books, movies and TV like The Simpsons. I just gathered the images together and then I just kind of ran each of them through my own personal checklist like, “are they campy? Are they scary? Do they have claws or fangs?” It was strictly observational. I tried to look at these two kinds of archetypical vampires and define what was it that what were their main defining characteristics. Once you do that, you can easily compare and contrast what those are. Nosferatu had little rat fangs right in the middle of his face, and Dracula had canine teeth. Dracula has a beautiful manicure; you would hold his hand if you met him on the street, Nosferatu has those terrible talons; he’s clearly going to hurt you, you know to stay away from him. I looked at their attributes and what they what they effectively communicated and symbolized. It’s almost like birdwatching where you have to look for the distinguishing characteristics. Your research uses Dracula and Nosferatu as two overlapping categories. Why these two in particular?

Opposite: “Blood Types: Vampire Typologies” by Angela Riechers

Those were two vampires from very different eras, and they reflected it very much. They just almost have nothing in common when you look at them in their appearance. I started to tease out (this difference). I looked at every part of them like the hair, the claws, the fangs, the outfits. It’s like a visual shorthand, and just the word vampire has lots of like pointy letters in it V and M. So those almost automatically become teeth or fangs, then we can’t we can’t stop there. We have to show the blood dripping. Just in case you don’t get it like that. There’s a lot of overkill, but when you when you look at, Dracula is overkill. You know, he’s got that European accent and he’s so dapper, so manicured, and groomed. He almost seems too civilized to be a bloodsucker. You look at Nosferatu and you think, “that’s a monster”. Dracula has already evolved into a more contemporary monster, almost like an evil businessman who looks nice but is raiding the coffers of whatever country they want to raid. Can you elaborate on the “blood type” metaphor used to sort and categorize these vampires? I realized that I sort of had a natural graphic device in the idea of blood types, so I came up with a sort of graphic strategy of saying type A and type B – which are all blood types also – to sort different vampires. Then I had the subgroups, also similar to how blood types have subgroups. They have to look at all these other markers in the blood. I realized I can keep using this medical terminology to keep breaking the types down. One of them was “Campy”, another was “Teen”; the routine vampires. There are others strictly for children like The Count on Sesame Street. The vampire is a really enduring kind of cultural touchstone; everybody knows about the vampire somehow. It just became very adaptable to the point where it wasn’t a scary thing anymore. It was easy to see how the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula quickly devolved into camp because he was kind of silly. He was hard to take seriously, even 73

probably a few years after the introduction. Nobody is scared of that anymore. He’s just a weirdo in a tuxedo. Fun fact, he was buried in his Dracula costume. That actually made me really sad when I found that out. What was interesting to me is that you almost never see a Nosferatu type vampire depiction anymore, and that was only 30 years before the Bela Lugosi type came along. It made this big leap where it became socially palatable for lack of a better word. This new set of visual short-hands like the tuxedo, the cape, the grooming; it captured something in the collective unconscious that somehow Nosferatu did not. He seemed very specific and he remained very specific, whereas the (Bela Lugosi) Dracula model just provided a springboard for so many odd things like Bunnicula, the bunny rabbit vampire and Count Chocula. Why do we need a vampire cereal? I don’t know, but people love it. What are your thoughts on the design of monster or horror posters seen nowadays?

Original cover of the book “Geek Love”, designed by Chip Kidd

It seems like most of the horror movies right now are the slasher kind of movie. I haven’t seen anything lately that really grabbed me. I feel like the era of movie posters is over. You just don’t really see anything great’ it’s pretty much a scene from the movie with some type on it. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of love put into the [design] process. It seems that with paperback reissues of authors like Stephen King, the design language changes dramatically compared to what it was originally. What do you make of that? For every book I can think of, they just get worse and worse. There is a book called Geek Love by Katherine Dunn where Chip Kidd designed the cover. The book is about a family where the parents deliberately breed their children as circus freaks, so they have a boy with flippers and Siamese twins and a girl with a long tail and a boy who’s psycho. The way Chip Kidd drew those letters, like there’s three letter E’s in that and they’re all different and really freaky. So it’s this beautiful, spare typographic thing that tells you exactly what’s going on in the book. By the time you get to the paperback edition, people are doing paintings of circuses. All the sophistication is lost because it is actually a very sophisticated story about families and love and they happen to be freaks. It’s a great book, I recommend it highly. But there is this thing that happens where for a larger, more general audience, it’s almost like the designers don’t trust that they’ll be able to get something like that and I think that’s insulting, frankly. I think if it’s well designed and it stands out, anybody would be willing to take a look at it. Whereas if you have a whole wall of these dumb, acrylic circus painting type book covers, like, who cares?

Softcover reissue of “Geek Love”, designed by David Hughes

Why do you think that is? I think there are levels of design. When there’s a new book coming out for Alfred A Knopf, they have a marketing department that will design a beautiful cover. They’ll have chip kid do something fantastic because that’s a prestige level. It’s the new book, it’s a hardcover by this great author, and so on. By the time it finds a wider audience, what the cover looks like doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Is this a format that appeals more to a less design interested audience? Do we want them to be drawn in by the circus instead of by the typography, which is kind of like an arcane inside baseball kind of thing? There’s a lot of design that you see where the point is not only made, it’s reiterated. Chip Kidd gave a talk where he shows a picture of an apple and the word “apple” and he says, “you can do this, but you never do this”. You never say apple with the word “apple” under it, because that’s treating your audience like they’re morons. There needs to be more of a willingness to allow people to not get it right away, but to look at and think about it. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 74

Interview: Angela Riechers

“There is a lot of overkill, but when you look at it, Dracula is overkill.”

Projected, Printed Fear

PROJECTED, PRINTED FEAR In order to better understand how monsters communicate biological and cultural fears and beliefs visually, I needed visuals. The challenge was of finding material spanning enough history to get a sense of how images around monsters evolved with time. Another challenge was linking the topic of monsters with graphic design in a way that makes sense and pushes research forward. Monstrous depictions in art were considered, though fell outside the scope of graphic design. Books and manuscripts proved to be insufficient, as those were more relevant to typography compared to image. Enter the film poster. Over a hundred years old, this history of the medium offers time capsules of culture. The film posters in 1920’s Germany convey an air of post-war bleakness and cynicism through their expressionistic imagery. Soviet film posters emulated the then state-sanctioned constructivist style. As Ian Haydn Smith states in his book Selling The Movie: The Art of The Film Poster, the elements in film posters act as “signposts of shifting attitudes” (6). Just like film posters, monsters also represent beliefs in culture, adapting their form to match the context they are in. For instance, the 1950’s saw the start of an influx of monster films about giant, destructive animals such as “Them!” (1954), “Godzilla” (1954) and “Tarantula” (1955). There is a pattern across these films of scientific experiments gone wrong. The dangers of nuclear power were on the minds of people at the time as USA and USSR were performing bomb tests amidst the backdrop of The Cold War. Having seen the aftermath in Japan during WWII, the fear of unpredictable, unprecedented destruction weighed heavy on society. Kendall Philips, in his book Projected Fears, suggests horror films become more popular during times of social upheaval. (9) The monster film translates internal fears into external images. When monsters began appearing in film posters 1920 onwards, their images began to spread into the public eye, capturing imaginations. They still do so to this day; if you were to imagine Dracula, chances are you would default to Bela Lugosi’s portrayal from 1931. If not, it’s more likely than not that there are hints of that rendition of the character in the media we consume today. Monsters and film posters are, in this sense, intertwined and an appropriate medium to research for the purposes of my thesis topic on monstrous imagery. In the following sections, I will showcase the exercise and analysis I’ve performed on film posters of 4 categories of monster: Vampire, Zombie, Werewolf and Ghost. There are many monsters out in the world. These categories are arguably the most popular to many. The posters in these categories have dissected in terms of their images, their colors and their relation to image and typography. The aim was to, by taking apart these elements, gain insight into how they translate invisible fears into visible ephemera.

Case Study: Vampires

CASE STUDY: VAMPIRES

Vampires have become one of the most well known and recognizable monsters in media. Where did this blood-sucking corpse emerge from and what has brought it from everywhere from the silver screen to Sesame Street? What followed these questions was an investigation on the origins and images of vampires. Vampires are, primarily, a European myth. The first instances of them can be found in records dating back to the 1700’s in pastoral Eastern Europe. They detailed strange incidents about corpses with sharp teeth and nails, full-looking bellies and bloody lips, of families succumbing to unknown sickness after funerals. Medicine was not at the stage to identify these signs as consequences of human decomposition and diseases spread from rotting corpses. What they did know was Christianity. The Christian belief of the time was that blood was where the spirit of a person resided. People believed the dead, in order to get their soul back, came back to life to draw the souls of the living. From here emerges a possible account for what we visually associate with vampires; fangs, blood and Christian symbolism. As the vampire myth traveled further West within Europe and into larger metropolitan areas from small, rural villages, the details of their appearance started to shift. The image from a bloated, rosy cheeked peasant shifts to that of a high-class sophisticate. It reflects the change in demographics, of who’s consuming these stories. Here the vampire is framed as a sort of imposter, a wolf in sheep’s clothing stalking unsuspecting victims at ballrooms and bedchambers. Here the vampire is also subject to romanticism; a predator that allures and is alluring to women. This interpretation of vampire, popularized by Bela Lugosi in Dracula in 1931, is what we visually associate with to this day. Just as the vampire blended into upper-class European culture, it currently resides today as one of us, indistinguishable from you and I save for when they reveal their familiar traits. With this visual shift, the vampire has become sympathetic and sometimes heroic as seen in tv shows and movies from the 1990’s onwards.

1920’s

Dracula’s Death Austria-Hungary 1921

Nosferatu Germany 1922

1930’s

Dracula USA 1931

Vampires: Image Study

1940’s

The Vampire’s Ghost USA 1945

Son of Dracula USA 1943

1950’s

Horror of Dracula Britain 1957

Lust of the Vampire Italy 1957

Horror of Dracula Britain 1957

Vampires: Image Study

1960’s

Dracula: Prince of Darkness Britain 1966

Kiss of the Vampire Britain 1963

1970’s

Nosferatu USA 1979

The Satanic Rites of Dracula Britain 1973

1980’s

Near Dark USA 1987

The Hunger USA 1983

1990’s

Buffy The Vampire Slayer USA 1992

Bram Stoker’s Dracula USA 1992

Vampires: Image Study

2000’s

True Blood USA 2008-14

Twilight USA 2008

2010’s

Midnight Son USA 2010

What We Do in the Shadows New Zealand 2014

1920’s Top to Bottom: Original Poster No Image No Image (Grayscale) No Image (B&W)

Vampires: Reduction Study

1930’s

1940’s

Vampires: Reduction Study

1950’s

1960’s

Vampires: Reduction Study

1970’s

1980’s

Vampires: Reduction Study

1990’s

2000’s

Vampires: Reduction Study

2010’s

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1930’s

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Vampires: Color Study

1940’s

1950’s

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1960’s

1970’s

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Vampires: Color Study

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1980’s

1990’s

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Vampires: Color Study

2000’s

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Vampires are often depicted preying or about to prey on a woman in distress

Fangs, blood, bats and castles were common visual cues denoting vampires

The colors linked with vampires have over time become subdued and implicit

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Case Study: Zombies

CASE STUDY: ZOMBIES

With Vampires, we saw a specific manifestation of how people in a Christian, European context approached death and the reanimated corpse. The Zombie also involves both these things, though unlike vampires, their roots start in the Voodoo culture of the Caribbean. Zombies emerge from accounts of presumably dead and buried persons reappearing sometime after death, brought back to life through witchcraft. They lose their memories and identity, becoming a mindless drone that accepts commands and does manual labor. Such accounts made their way to the United States, forming the possible basis for what’s considered the first zombie film White Zombie in 1932. The Caribbean connection of zombies is reflected in the visuals of some films in this time, where scenes and visual elements frame the region as exotic. In 1968, George Romero’s Night of The Living Dead released in theaters and introduced what we know to be zombies; reanimated corpses that cannibalize the living and turn them into one of their own. There are multiple interpretations as to what cultural fear or sentiment zombies associated themselves with. Some have argued them to be a critique of unchecked consumerism while others saw zombies as a response to Cold War anxieties of the time. While what they represent is debatable, what is certain is these corpses shambled their way into popular culture. The images we see of zombies in media speaks to an underlying fear of disease—both its spread and potential lethal effects—as well as of loss of identity or individuality.

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1940’s

Dead Men Walk USA 1943

I Walked with a Zombie USA 1943

1950’s

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake USA 1959

The Thing That Couldn’t Die USA 1958

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Zombies: Image Study

1960’s

The Plague of the Zombies Britain 1966

Night of The Living Dead USA 1968

1970’s

Dawn of the Dead USA 1978

Shivers USA 1978

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1980’s

The Evil Dead USA 1981

Zombie Holocaust USA 1980

1990’s

Netherworld USA 1992

Night of the Living Dead USA 1990

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Zombies: Image Study

2000’s

Day of the Dead USA 2008

28 Days Later Britain 2002

2010’s

The Night Eats the World France 2018

World War Z USA 2013

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1930’s Top to Bottom: Original Poster No Image No Image (Grayscale) No Image (B&W)

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Zombies: Reduction Study

1940’s

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1950’s

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Zombies: Reduction Study

1960’s

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Zombie visuals imply intrusion; of personal spaces, of homes and of domains meant for the living

Zombies distinguish themselves visually through their exaggerated rot and decay

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Zombie imagery tied to earth and dirt, showcases a rejection of the natural order of life and death

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CASE STUDY: WEREWOLVES Case Study: Werewolves

Prior to industrialization and the shifting of populations to large, metropolitan centers, people lived in small, tight-knit communities. Such arrangement was common; a person had their “people”, their “place”. To conform with a tribe meant having a safety network. To not be a part of a tribe was to reject society and be left outside its bounds without promise of safety. The werewolf emerges as a by-product of this dynamic, an entity signifying the dangers that existed outside the security found in tribes. Out of such dangers, predatory animals such as wolves were a common threat, known to kill livestock and people. Being in a tribe made safety from wolves possible due to sheer numbers and greater ability to fend themselves. A person not in a tribe or outcasted did not have the same safety. Only the doman of the wild, of wolves and animals, was an option for such people. This created an association of people without a tribe in the wild with wolves and it wasn’t long until the two started to morph in people’s minds as a single, combined entity; a man with looked and behaved like an animal. The supposed existence of werewolves, people thought, led to considerations about what causes a person to transform into one. Is it a transmissible illness? A curse planted by some evil force? Werewolves are an externalization of humanity’s dual relationship between conformity and nonconformity, bestial urges and social acceptance, the radiance of God and the moonlit glow of dark, nefarious forces.

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I Was A Teenage Werewolf USA 1957

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Werewolf imagery reflects internal struggles between social and antisocial tendencies

Werewolves invoke ancestral fears and dangers linked with predators

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Use of claws and claw marks are a visual suggestion of primal danger and violence

IMAGE STUDY: GHOSTS Case Study: Ghosts

Almost all cultures and religions have a conception of an afterlife, of a being’s soul persisting beyond death. The Abrahamic religions, for instance, subscribe to a belief in Heaven and Hell, and Buddhism and Hinduism take stock in reincarnation. The idea of a ghost emerges from the idea of something going wrong during the transition between life and death. Depending on where and how such errors took place, the conception of the ghost is formed. In Ancient Greece, those who passed away were believed to sometimes turn into “daimônes”, undefined supernatural beings who served Olympian gods by watching over mortals. With the prominence of Christianity, daimônes went from neutral observers to “demons”, agents of Satanic evil with the ability to assume the form of animals like cats, owls and frogs. This conception of demons colors the visual representations of ghosts seen in today’s media. Given the nebulous nature of ghosts, there isn’t a fixed description of them. This hasn’t deterred certain images linked to death being associated with them as seen in the use of skulls and skeletons in film posters for “The Screaming Skull” (1958) and “House on Haunted Hill” (1959). Use of light surrounded by dark imply the presence of life, though the look and feel of said light registers as supernatural. A similar logic applies to images. Another visual linked with ghosts is houses or castles, an association stemming from stories and rumors about the dead roaming the rooms and halls of their past life. From amorphous descriptions of ghosts also comes the visual of the draped ghost, a being without a fixed shape.

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De Spooktrein (Ghost Train) Germany 1927

The Cat and the Canary USA 1927

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The Cat and the Canary USA 1939

Supernatural USA 1933

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Dead of Night USA 1945

Earthbound USA 1940

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Ghost Ship USA 1952

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Ghosts: Image Study

House of Usher USA 1960

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Burnt Offerings USA 1976

Don’t Look Now Britain 1973

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A Nightmare on Elm Street USA 1984

Ghost Story USA 1981

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House on Haunted Hiill USA 1999

The Haunting USA 1999

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Thirteen Ghosts USA 2001

The Ring USA 2002

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We Are Still Here USA 2015

The Conjuring USA 2013

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Ghostly images are linked to death, explicitly and implicitly

Images of ghosts have become abstract, with common but unﬁxed visual cues to convey them

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How have monstrous images changed with time?

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Monstrous images in the past were more explicit in conveying monstrosity through images, symbols and motifs

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These visual elements have evolved, but have also become subdued and implicit

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Are today’s monstrous images still communicating their intention? Or have they lost their bite?

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Zine: 30 Seconds, 30 Monsters

ZINE: 30 SECONDS, 30 MONSTERS As I continued to collect research and broaden my understanding about monsters, I grew curious about what other people thought of them. What comes to a person’s mind when asked, “What does a monster look like?” After obtaining index cards, markers and pens, I asked both members of the Graduate Graphic Design cohort at ArtCenter, friends and strangers if they had the time to draw something. Those who accepted the offer were asked to draw a response to a prompt within 30 seconds. The prompt was “monster”. I then timed each respondent and, when time ran out, collected and coumented the cards they drew on. Respondents were free to take photos of their drawings. The allowed drawing time, although short, was necessary for the exercise. I wanted to record people’s instinctual reactions, the first thing that popped into their minds. I felt extra time would have given respondents more time to consider the prompt and lead to a potentially less genuine, stereotypical or cliched response. It was also why the prompt was only revealed just before the timer starts to encourage spontaneity. After collecting 30 responses, I started sorting them, identifying similarities, contrasts and combinations in order to place them in various groupings based on specific, prominent features like “teeth” or “horns”. I also pit all the monsters into a graph and a venn diagram to visually articulate the exercise findings. A record of the exercise was made in the form of a zine, viewable in the following pages. An essay about monsters was also written. From doing this exercise, I learned what people consider to be monsters differs from person to person. While seemingly obvious, this does in turn affect how one organizes and categorizes them. This also became apparent as I was creating the zine, where certain drawings were paired together based on something I recognized that another person may have not. Another outcome was seeing certain features used to describe monsters. What is it about horns, for instance, that ties them to monstrosity? it was insights and questions like these that informed future exerces during the research process.

Opposite: Front Cover of zine “30 Seconds, 30 Monsters” 5.5x8.5 in

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Spread showcasing venn diagram of drawings collected from the exercise

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SECONDS, MONSTERS A zine by Syed Hamza-Salar Hassan

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CONTENTS OF MONSTERS AND GRAPHIC DESIGN

30 SECONDS, 30 MONSTERS

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— Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

“Full of rebuke to traditional methods of organizing knowledge and human experience, the geography of the monster is an imperiling expanse, and therefore always a contested cultural space.”

The Design Macabre

Zine: 30 Seconds, 30 Monsters

OF MONSTERS AND GRAPHIC DESIGN An Essay by Syed Hamza-Salar Hassan Monsters. The stuff of scary stories, the unknown lurking under one’s bed, the thing that goes “bump” at night. These fantastical beings have been around for as long as human history itself and though the forms and names may have changed, they still hold a place in the cultures we’re part of and the entertainment we consume. An understanding of the evolving contextual nature of monsters can promote new research methodologies and method of practice, to better prepare designers in navigating volatile cultural contexts of today and the future. Before continuing further, it may help to first define what a monster is. The word is derived from the latin words monstrare—“to demonstrate”—and monere—“to warn”. The exact nature of what is demonstrated and warned about is determined by the contexts they exist in, which takes into account time and place in addition to societal and cultural factors such as class, race, religion, gender and sex. Monsters aren’t so much creatures of a certain time as they are “a displacement: an exhibit, demonstrative of something other than itself ”. (Cohen, xiv) If one were to choose a particular monster and delve further into its history, they would find in it a detailed picture of the context it inhabited. Take, for instance, the Giant during the AngloSaxon period between the 7th and 13th Centuries. At the time, christians and pagans were clashing with one another for superiority over what is now modern day England. The christians saw the Giant as a symbol of sinful excess associated with the violence of death and sex. It was a reflection of they considered unacceptable, a manifested opposite of their beliefs. On the other hand, the pagans saw the Giant as a legendary figure whose “excess” was 1

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linked with notions of strength and fertility. When the pagans were wiped out, the latter interpretation of Giants was replaced with that of the former. The two interpretations surrounding the Giant allow for a detailed picture of the time, one that illustrates the attitudes, beliefs and fears of people at the time, serves as “an embodiment of a certain cultural moment”. (Cohen, 4) In the case of the Giant, this shift in context wasn’t the first nor the last time. The first iteration was recorded in records dating back to the Sumerians in reference to Gilgamesh, followed by the Gigantes of Greek myth and Niphilem of the Hebrew Bible. Aspects of Giants are present in recent contexts, as evidenced by the folklore of Paul Bunyan, the symbolic and literal greatness of the Lincoln Memorial and the destructive forces of movie icons King Kong and Godzilla. Monsters exist within and across contexts; they come back from the dead evolved and become refferents of yet another given place and time. Monsters are evolving documents of cultural contexts. Graphic design, like monsters, is demonstrative of something other than itself and refers to a specific context. Consider graphic design as used in branding; the use of typography, color, shape and space exhibits an understanding and communication of the context of the company (its purpose, values, etc) and the context of the market it operates within (audiences, competitors, etc). The individual graphic elements refer to something beyond their literal formal features. A typeface like Caslon may point to a sense of refinement or a particular period in time. The color red goes beyond being a pigment, RGB value and instead represents feelings like passion or anger. A square or rectangle ceases to be basic geometry and instead symbolizes strength or stability. Such associations depend on context; without it, graphic elements cease to be no more than bezier curves, ink cocktails and points joined by lines. Graphic design requires a context to embody to successfully communicate ideas much like how a monster needs a people to communicate their anxieties and fears. 2

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Similar to monsters, graphic design evolves along with the context it inhabits, taking cues and responding to the ever-evolving social, economic and political aspects of culture. Consider the aforementioned forms used in graphic design. Although forms may not communicate anything specific when removed from context, contexts themselves are not isolated constructs. They exist across time, refer to past versions of themselves and to other related contexts. This in turn creates a narrative surrounding those contextualized forms, where the use of a typeface or a visual motif suggests a continuity. Rebranding is indicative of this. Previous forms from a past context are brought to one that is more current. Here the success of the task lies in the designer’s ability to translate established ideas and visual cues to the newer context and transition new ideas into it in a consistent manner. Monsters themselves are adept at this exercise as demonstrated earlier. They take new forms and update exisiting ones to better represent the context they inhabit. The artifacts generated from graphic design and depictions of monstrosity point to this ongoing project the both are part of in a given culture. Having established the similarities between monsters and graphic design, the focus turns towards what fruit the two may bear when these two concepts are combined. One is a potential framework for generating qualitative research. Graphic design is often concerned with coming up with solutions based on quantitative and qualitative research. Quantitative research—numerical and factual data—has become increasingly more streamlined and accessible due to advances in technology and tools. One can quickly find out how large an audience is, their ages, their ethnicities, average income, etc. Qualititative research, on the other hand, is less straightfoward as it involves feelings, opinions and beliefs, features data that requires more active interpretation. Monsters paint a picture of a time and place that is qualitative; it is an amalgam of a given culture’s anxieties and fears, revealing what is “[submerged] below the conscious surface...[within] the 3

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deep fathoms of the unconscious”. (Asma, 189) Designers are always in need of more robust and effective means of gathering research. Monsters may serve as an effective lens through which such qualitative information can be gathered and interpreted, a means of better understanding the audiences designers cater to. Secondly, the interection of these two topics may serve as a starting point for designers to learn how to design for monster and horror related media. The past 100 years has seen monsters creeping onto the forefront of popular media such as books, movies, television and video-games. There has been a wealth of written material in the humanities analyzing monster media, yet there is a lack of information about the use of graphic design in such media. For instance, when one sees a poster for a horror movie, what role does typography—the typeface used, its color, texture, scale and placement, etc—play in communicating the promise of the movie? There is a visual language at play that, while familiar from seeing it oft-repeated, hasn’t been explored in depth. It is surprising given how popular horror media is, with everyone from large film studios to small independent game developers creating content within the genre. Graphic designers have played a part in the creation of such work, yet how they contribute to them has yet to be made explicit. A deep look into monster media through a critical graphic design lens would serve to fill in the gaps about designing for this niche yet constant staple of contemporary popular culture. Monster’s have been around for a long time, and judging by how entrenched they are in history and popular culture, they’re here to stay. Be it as a way to reach deeper knowledge about audiences or engage in a popular domain of entertainment, critically engaging with monsters has the potential to yield insight when it comes to the research and practice of graphic design. It’s only a matter of taking the first step, of staring deep into the dark to see what goes “bump” at night.

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Works Cited 1. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Monster Theory: Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, NED-New edition, University of Minnesota Press, 1996 2. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Of Giants: Sex, Monsters and the Middle Ages, University of Minnesota Press, 1999 3. Asma, Stephen T. On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, Oxford University Press, 2009

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30 SECONDS, 30 MONSTERS An Exercise in Typology and Catergorization As a part of thesis research into monsters and graphic design, I asked people to draw in 30 seconds a response to the word “monster”. The collected drawings were then organized and juxtaposed by appearance, specific characteristics and feelings towards them. An exercise in creating typologies. Go through the following pages and explore the exercise. Once done, return to this page and reflect on the following questions below: Q. Which monster did you find the scariest? Why? Q. Which one did you find the least scary? Why? Q. What differences or similarities did you find between them? Q. If you had to create a new category of monster, what would it be? Q. Why do you think people considered these “monsters”?

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ABSTRACT

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A. Abstract B. “Humanoid” C. Fuzzy/Slimy D. Demons E. Reptiles

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TEETH

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HORNS

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Written and designed for Graduate Thesis in Fall 2021 as part of ArtCenter College of Design’s Graduate Graphic Design (MGx) program. Display type is set in Dead History. Body type is set in Brioso Pro. Printed on 8.5x11 printer paper.

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Poster: The Story of Vampires

POSTER: THE STORY OF VAMPIRES As part of the thesis project, I was tasked with creating a poster explaining my thesis topic to children at the 5th grade level. This 5th grade poster was a way to simplify the material and focus on some of the larger points I wanted to make. To talk generally or abstractly about monsters at this stage would have been too much information for a single poster and so I instead chose to focus on a specific one— namely vampires—to make my point. To better prepare myself for the task, I dove deeper into materials related to the history of vampires. Such materials included Thomas M. Bohn’s book The Vampire: Origins of a European Myth, Matt Kaplan’s Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite: The Science of Monsters and Mathias Clasen’s Monsters Evolve: A Biocultural Approach to Horror Stories. Reading these texts provided me enough information about the origins of vampires, how they’ve changed over history and why they persist today to explore within the bounds of a poster. At the stage of thesis when I started making the poster, I had yet to determine a visual style or language with which to package my thesis in. The poster served as a prototype for determining the moves I need to make in terms of form, color and typography for my final deliverable. The materials I read to make the poster gave me a better understanding of vampires, as well as concepts transferable to the analysis of other monsters.

Opposite: Detailed cropping taken from “The Story of Vampires” 22x17in

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DESIGN EXPLORATIONS Much like monsters, the design of the deliverable evolved over the course of its development. One of the main aims of this process was to create a visual system that can accurately convey the expressive and excessive qualities of monsters. I used my explorations into monster movie posters as inspiration, drawing from their use of color and iconography as a starting point for my design process. One of the main takeaways from these explorations is that it’s important to let the subject and content inform the design. This is especially key when the content relates to something as chaotic and excessive as monsters. The design process hit its stride once the preconceived notions of how to approach the work were set aside. It made room for work that was looser and more organic whilst maintaining an internal logic that runs through the developed applications. Letting my research about monsters guide my hand led to a design system that is evokes the subject matter in a fresh and exciting way. Another takeaway was learning when to leave things open ended. As a designer, the expectation is to have a fool-proof plan for how visual elements should be treated within a given system. This approach is valid for some but not all cases. Monsters are virtual representations of disorder and chaos; in other words, a graphic designer’s nightmare. The “right” approach would be to confine the monstrous to the grid, turn it into a caged spectacle in the tightly-wound carnival of design. The more exciting approach is to leave the cage door unlocked and allow for spontaneity, letting the monstrous rampage and then pick apart what’s useful from the rubble. By keeping the visual system more open, the work becomes less precious and more prone to transforming into what it has to be to effectively communicate the underlying idea.

Opposite: Scanned pencil rendering of The Design Macabre’s mark

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Explorations of The Threshold Crossing Monster

Explorations of The Claw

Explorations of Letter Logomark

Exploration of combined elements Opposite: Pencil sketches of potential logos for The Design Macabre. These were digitized and made into editable vector files for further design explorations

Logo Studies When exploring possible avenues for the logo of The Design Macabre, I was drawn to the idea of representing the monstrous as something that exists and travels between the conscious and subconscious worlds. The initial studies aimed to convey this through negative space and an interplay between light and dark. Additionally, more graphic and typographic approaches were also examined, such as the monstrous hand and iterations of a monstrous looking letter “M” knocking out the letter “D” to create a logomark. My earlier poster explorations led to the possibility of a 4-quadrant logo that features popular signifiers of monsters.

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Top Left: Herm of Janus Unknown Circa 18th Century

The Janus Face During development, I learned of the Ancient Roman God Janus, the two-headed/ two-faced god of doorways and gateways. It was the perfect analogue for what I wished to communicate about monsters. I used that as the basis for further exploration. At this stage, I began to further abstract the idea of the Janus face, bringing both faces to the same plane and simplifying the features down to a silhouette. The mark was simplified even further by removing the implied second face, allowing the second face to appear as a result of repeating the first shape. When this modular aspect of the mark revealed itself, the possibilities of its use opened up.

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The silhouette exploration simplified further to a single face, refined further to create the official mark of The Design Macabre

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MACABRE THE DESIGN

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MACABRE Typography and Wordmark With the mark finalized, the next step was typography. For these explorations, I explored serif typefaces that communicated a monstrous quality, either through their weight, the design of the serifs or the quality of gesture. A few of these typographic explorations were traced from the film posters I explored earlier to see if they were an appropriate fit.

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Above: Explorations of typefaces in relation to the face mark.

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Tenet Poster Development A: First draft of poster. The pieces were in place, though the rotation was still too subtle a move for the subject matter. B: I introduced perspective to the type, making it seem as though it were towering over the viewer. C: I used perspective to create a more disconnected and chaotic feeling in the type. Depth is created by extruding the graphic elements into 3D shapes. D: Here I focused on pushing the depth and perspective even further by having the type feel as though it were charging towards the viewer. E: The final version. I emphasized the chaotic aspect of monsters by having the extruded type organically twist and curve across the poster.

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THE DESIGN MACABRE presents...

An Evening with THE DESIGN MACABRE Speakers Series

Wednesday 25th May Ambassador Auditorium 131 South Saint John Avenue Pasadena, CA

THE DESIGN MACABRE presents... Wednesday 25th May Ambassador Auditorium 131 South Saint John Avenue Pasadena, CA

Wednesday 25th May Ambassador Auditorium 131 South Saint John Avenue Pasadena, CA

Tenet Poster Development A: I introduced speaker photographs into the established color and type system, seeing how the logo can interact with the imagery. B: A more type-oriented experiment with a subdued logo treatment C: Here I blew the logo up in size and made it into a more abstract form that hints at the greater whole. D: The final version. Here I introduced depth to the logo and had the text follow the abstracted logo to make it consistent with the rest of the brand’s materials.

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List of References

LIST OF REFERENCES 1.

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Cohen, J. J. (1996). Monster Culture (Seven Theses). In J. J. Cohen (Ed.), Monster Theory: Reading Culture (NED-New edition, pp. 3–25). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctttsq4d.4 Gilmore, D. D. (2003). How to Approach Monsters. In Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors (pp. 11–22). University of Pennsylvania Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fhdqm.5 Chris Askholt Hammeken, & Maria Fabricius Hansen. (2019). Ornament and Monstrosity in Early Modern Art. Amsterdam University Press. eBook. Bovey, A. (2015 April 30). Medieval Monsters The British Library. https://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/ medieval-monsters-from-the-mystical-to-the-demonic Drucker, J., & McVarish, E. (2009). Graphic design history: a critical guide. Pearson Prentice Hall. Ruth, Greg. (2017). Horror is Good For You (and Even Better for Your Kids). Tor.com. https://www.tor.com/2017/10/02/ horror-is-good-for-you-and-even-better-for-your-kids/ Riechers, A (2009. October 26) Blood Types: Vampire Typologies. https://angelariechers.com/blood-types Jones, E. M. (2000). Monsters from the Id : The Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film. Spence Pub. Co. Smith, I. H. (2018). Selling the movie : the art of the film poster (University of Texas Press edition.). University of Texas Press. Hendrix, G., & Errickson, W. (2017). Paperbacks from Hell: the twisted history of ’70s and ’80s horror fiction. Quirk Books. Cohen, J. J. (1999). Of Giants : Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages. University of Minnesota Press. Samara, T. (2006). Type style finder : The Busy Designer’s Guide to Choosing Type. Rockport Publishers. Thomas M. Bohn. (2019). The Vampire: Origins of a European Myth. Berghahn Books. Matt Kaplan. (2012). Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite: The Science of Monsters. Simon and Schuster. Thomson, R. G. (2018). “From Wonder To Error: A Genealogy Of Freak Discourse In Modernity,” From Freakery: Cultural Spectacles Of The Extraordinary Body. In A. S. Mittman & M. Hensel (Eds.), Classic Readings on Monster Theory: Demonstrare, Volume One (pp. 89–98). Arc Humanities Press. Https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvfxvc3p.14 Leo Braduy. (2016). Haunted: On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural Worlds – Leo Braudy. Yale University Press. eBook. Erle, S., Hendry, H. (2020). Monsters: Interdisciplinary Explorations in Monstrosity. Palgrave Commun 6, 53. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0428-1 Asma, S. T. (2014). Monsters on the Brain: An Evolutionary Epistemology of Horror. Social Research, 81(4), 941–968. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26549660 Clasen, M. (2012). Monsters Evolve: A Biocultural Approach to Horror Stories. Review of General Psychology, 16(2), 222–229. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027918 Phillips, K. R. (2005). Projected fears : horror films and American culture. Praeger Publishers.

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About The Author Syed Hamza-Salar Hassan is a graphic designer and illustrator with a love for monsters, LEGO’s and video-games. He represented ArtCenter College of Design in Graphic Design USA Magazine’s feature “Students to Watch 2022”. Website: www.hamzasalar.com Contact: hamzasalar.design@gmail.com Colophon This book was designed by Syed Hamza-Salar Hassan for Graduate Thesis between September 2021–April 2022 at ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena CA. This thesis was made under the supervision of Professors Jennifer Sorrell and Michael Neal. Designed and typeset in Adobe InDesign CC 2020. Body copy is set in Trade Gothic at 9pt. Captions are set in Trade Gothic Oblique at 8pt. Headline text is set in Birch Std. Printed and bound by Pasadena Image Printing. All images are owned and © by the respective holders and are presented here for educational purposes within the “fair use” terms of US Code: title 17, sec. 107. Edition ___ of 4

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