The Karen Fold

The Karen Fold

Karen Nulf and Students

Various Years

A collection of student-made zines crafted using the “Karen Fold”. This fold allows the zine be read as a book as well as a poster. Karen’s vision behind this project was to incorporate a component of design history. Each one focuses on a historically famous graphic designer while considering the aesthetics of the fold, the readability of the typography, and the connotations of the images. Karen had a way to keep you questing for more. She extended the  parameters in order to challenge your design skills. Realizing that the poster was going to be cut in the middle, folded down the center and brought into a book was a phenomenal paper trick! She required every page of this 8 page booklet to work aesthetically as pages, spreads and when open, as a poster. Let me repeat, each page of the book had to read with the type oriented for reading and yet it also had to unfold as a poster! This was a system within a system. It was known as the “Karen Fold”. Everyone who had studied design at OU would have had to do one of these “Karen Folds” before graduating.