Max Francisco

Graphic Designer. Motion Designer. Photographer. Videographer. Creator of Exciting Things.


Projects

VMB
Lock Step

Cherokee Street
You Got Hurt
Mirage


(& More)


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Book Design + Bookbinding You Got Hurt


You Got Hurt is an adaptation of an episode of The Nine Club which involves an interview with pro skateboarder Mike Mo Capaldi, who was involved in a tragic golf kart accident that left one of his legs completely paralyzed.

Translating a podcast into the book format involved several hurdles to overcome, as I needed to translate an auditory experience into a visual one, while also taking something with a constant, linear chronology and re-pacing it to work across pages and spreads.

Advised by Amy Auman
December 2024 While listening to this podcast, I quickly noticed a divide between topic and tone; while Mike Mo and the podcast hosts were talking about serious and traumatic events, they would often find themselves going into tangents and joking around with each other, often using humor to lighten up the mood. This led me to pivot my book into a skateboarding magazine, complete with full-page “ad breaks” (highlighting the sporatic moments of comedic relief) and a removable poster inserted at the end of the book.

With this unorthodox approach, I had to figure out how to balance the visual language of the core narrative with the “ad breaks” in a way that feels visually distinct, while not creating too much of a tonal shift to feel distracting. I found the most success by making structural differences between the “ad breaks” and the core narrative, such as omitting the marginalia and using a lighter, more matte paper stock for those individual pages.

I had a lot of fun with developing and crafting You Got Hurt’s outside covers as well. I used griptape, paint markers, and custom-made stickers to make the book feel like a skateboard, bringing a tactile surprise to the experience, while also adding a hand-made element to the book. Back to Home