Moby Dick Digitized

(focusing on illustrate the text/make typography art, #7 and #8 on this post about making literary text digital)

I was originally going to translate sections of Moby Dick into Spanish and use my mic to make an audible Spanish version, but my mic is quiet so I decided to do something else: typography art. Then it got me thinking of something else that's taken texts and even movies into the digital world. Minimalist posters are everywhere on the internet. So I did a bit of both and may have even gotten carried away with it. Here are some minimalist posters-ish pictures I found for Moby Dick (image 1, image 2, image 3) if you don't know what they are and don't understand my creations below...

Minimalist Posters (made using Windows Paint - can you guess which was hardest?):

This is for Chapter 61 titled Stubb Kills a Whale, featuring the whaling
boats. The quote is found in the last paragraph of this chapter.

So we have the captain's hat for Chapter 28: Ahab where Captain Ahab is really introduced.
The quote describing Ahab is found on the first page of the chapter.

We have Moby Dick's tail featured in Chapter 41 dedicated to none other
than Moby Dick himself. The quote is found on the first page of the chapter.

Chapter 99: The Doubloon features the coin Ishmael describes
on the first page of this chapter.

Now for the typography pictures that will be under the read more to save on scrolling space.

These are my own works, hand done, and it took a lot longer than the Paint made posters above. First I searched out how many times the names "Ahab," "Captain Ahab," and "Moby Dick" were used in the text (not including the title or introductory pages).

(just a picture of the Ahab search...look at all that yellow!)

"Ahab" alone showed up 512 times. "Captain Ahab" appeared 58 times (that Ishmael! no respect for the captain). "Moby Dick" showed up 77 times. To do my typography pictures, I decided to use "Captain Ahab" 58 times on the drawing of Moby Dick and "Moby Dick" 77 times to make Captain Ahab. Symbolically, I hope to represent their obsession over one another. Capt. Ahab's only goal in life is to kill the great white whale and Moby Dick is there to destroy everything the captain has brought to him.

Moby Dick

Captain Ahab sitting on a bench with harpoon

So I hope I have successfully turned Moby Dick into something digitally mediated. I had fun doing this!