Earliest Memory of Design

Dr. Seuss's books were my first experience with design. When they were read to me as a child, and later as I read them to myself, I was fascinated with the design of colors and shapes that Dr. Seuss, used to create his fantastic stories. In the same way that Dr. Seuss made up nonsense words to fit into his rhyming scheme, he used his illustrations to make a world that matched his imaginative visions.

My favorite book by Dr. Seuss has always been The Sleep Book (pictured above) because of its incredible landscapes. The book features an explanation of how people all around the world (Dr. Seuss's world that is) go to sleep, and every page has a completely different design scheme. The patterns of the designs fill up the whole page; each one truly is a different world.

As a child, I especially enjoyed the movement of each of the pages. Like in the pages shown above, Dr. Seuss uses stairs to create an illusion of depth in each page. The reader's eyes follow the stairs to the line of the water, which leads back down to the base of the stairs. Each of his pages gives the reader a similar feeling of being transported around the page. Rather than having one or two central focus points, Dr. Seuss designs his pages to be a full interactive experience.

Besides the layout design of the pages, Dr. Seuss takes on the identity of an architect, creating whimsical buildings for his characters to live in. The doorways and windows are almost always rounded, rather than square, and the railings ands staircases are always curved. Even the boat pictured above is stylized. In this way, Dr. Seuss employs design to create another world; he challenges the conventional idea of buildings to transport his readers.

The final aspect of Dr. Seuss's work that always intrigued me was his characters' interaction with their world. Not only does Dr. Seuss re-design architecture, but he re-designs how his characters act in their surroundings. His characters sleep above doorways, over stairs, and in keyholes. Beyond creating a whimsical environment, Dr. Seuss's characters themselves embody whimsy.

Dr. Seuss's books are a childhood staple, and for me, they demonstrated how the design of our world can be re-imagined.