SI: Silicon

Challenge

Under Prof. Gökhan Ersan, I was tasked with creating a coffee table book that would be published by the end of the semester. The main challenge was to create a polished editorial design for a single subject that would implement a navigational design.

Approach

I utilized a 9 x 9 grid system, custom icons, contact pages, spread planning, and experimental design tools to strengthen the visual language of the book and help solidify my vision for the final printing.

Duration: October – December 2025 One semester (~2.5 months)
My Role: Designer
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Adobe Dimension, QGIS

Structure and Flatplan

Before the first spread was designed, the book was planned three times over.

The full 64-page flatplan, spread by spread, with working titles and reference images

Grey-block wireframes for every spread, composed before any image or copy went in

A Tour Through The Book

Each part opens on a rendered title page, then moves between full-bleed imagery, diagram spreads, and text pages at the pace the flatplan set.

The front cover of Si: Silicon, styled as the element's periodic table cell

The table of contents, listing all five parts beside their navigational icons

Special Tools

Two of the things holding the book together are not drawn by hand, and neither is made in the software this project would normally be credited to. Both were skills I picked up mid-semester, specifically because the book needed them.

Coding topography in QGIS

The book’s contour line work is generated from real elevation data of Mt. Etna in QGIS, then exported and rebuilt as clean vectors in Adobe Illustrator to match the book’s grid and type.

The raw QGIS contour output for Mt. Etna, white lines on black with elevation labels

The finished Silicates spread pairing the vectorised contour lines with a mineral thin-section photograph

Rendering the navigation icons in 3D

The flat navigational marks also appear as 3D renders built in Adobe Dimension at each part’s title page, giving material, lighting, and depth to a mark that otherwise only works flat.

The Transformations mark rendered in 3D in Adobe Dimension, given material, lighting, and depth

The finished Part 02: Transformations title spread, using the 3D-rendered mark

Reflection

Systems beat spreads

Settling the grid, type, and icon language first turned 64 pages from an impossible workload into a sequence of solvable compositions.

Learn the tool the idea needs

QGIS and Dimension were both outside the Adobe workflow I knew. Picking them up mid-semester was faster than compromising the idea to fit the software I already had.

Iconography is information design

Treating the icons as navigation rather than decoration gave the book a structure a reader can feel without being told about it.