TENET
Christopher Nolan's unique approach to timeline editing has crafted a distinctive narrative structure in his films. I aimed to utilize the flexibility in reading brought by the typography and the unique folding method of newspapers to explore the relationship between typographic language and narrative structure. In many publications, typography often serves a supportive role, but I sought to use it to offer audiences a different storytelling experience, allowing typography to deeply engage with the reading process and narrative. One of the unique charms of newspapers is the flexibility of their pages. Through typographic design, I enabled readers to experience both the narrative timeline and the real-time structure of Nolan's films by reading while folded and unfolded, helping the audience to better understand the story of Tenet.
Each character has their own column in the newspaper, with their dialogues and storylines advancing along their respective paths, intertwining, separating, and looping, much like trains traveling parallel or diverging on different tracks. The various timelines intersect, overlap, and eventually form a closed loop. When you finish reading the entire sequence of the newspaper's cinematic narrative, you'll find that time has closed in on itself, bringing you back to the starting point. You can also read each newspaper page individually to explore what exactly happened on a specific day within the film's real-world timeline.
I used left-aligned and right-aligned typography to differentiate between forward and reverse chronology, helping readers understand the time point of the scene they are currently reading. I did not provide any specific reading instructions—you can read the reverse-chronology scenes in order and still achieve a coherent experience. Just like in the movie Tenet, we can understand the reverse chronology from a forward perspective, or interpret the forward chronology from a reverse perspective; it’s all like watching cars driving backward and people walking in reverse—time becomes a game of perspectives before our eyes.
