Alberto Hernández is a Spanish graphic designer currently living and working in London. Whilst completing his MA in graphic design at LCC last year, he came up with the idea for a ‘hybrid novel’, combining the text of a story with strong graphical elements, in order to embelish and enhance the reading experience. Appropriately taking on The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Alberto’s first hybrid novel is, simply put, a brilliant idea executed beautifully. I kind of wish I’d thought of the hybrid novel, but seeing as I didn’t, I got in touch with the man who did to find out more.

Continue reading for the interview and more images…

Where did the inspiration for the hybrid novel come from? And what was the design-process like?

The idea of hybrid novels came up after a long time searching through piles of books for adults, particularly novels, when I realised that barely any of them contained imagery. Why is this? My thought was that the older we are the less able we are to read images and that generally people tend to think that images diminish good writing; that is why I concluded that 95% of adult books that I saw those days did not contain imagery. I spent around 6 months working on this project, and most of this time was doing research and making prototypes, it took me just one month to design the final pieces actually. Research and process are to me the most important parts of a project, process must drive outcome, not the other way around.

Obviously the idea of putting story and illustration together is not a new one, but you’re idea is an entirely new concept isn’t it? Does the hybrid novel, in fact, give equal focus to both graphics and text? 

As you point out, the use of graphic elements in fiction is not new: we can find the first examples as early as the 16th century. Nowadays, we can find quite famous cases of graphics novels such as Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), or Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts (2007). In a hybrid novel, the story is still primary – the original text of the novel should not change at all. When designing a hybrid novel one has to be careful that the graphic and verbal devices one uses do not interfere with the story since we are helping readers to understand the story more easily, not to hamper the reading. But, on the other hand, I suppose hybrid novels give more focus to the graphics, after all, the main idea of a hybrid novel is to enhance the experience of reading and engage readers in a more dynamic narrative experience by adding playful graphic devices to the original novel.

How important is the user’s interaction with the book in experiencing the story? In other words, to what extent is the experience of the hybrid novel defined by interacting with the pages (peeling bits back, unfolding pages, merging photos), and different textures?

This is the most important part of a hybrid novel since it is a book that requires the readers’ actions and to be handled and experienced. A hybrid novel can be seen as a hybrid image-text book where written text and graphic devices such as illustration, photography, information graphics or typographic treatments may interject in order to hold a readers’ interest, adding interactive elements to the book, and also giving the printed page a multidimensional visual surface.

As your hybrid novel absolutely demands physical experience, I’m wondering what your opinion is on electronic forms of media, eBooks etc?

One of the reasons why I chose to work on this subject was because nowadays people use more and more digital stuff and somehow, they are losing the good habit of reading physical books. Nowadays we need books with visual effects more than ever in order to attract the attention of possible readers and make people read physical books since eBook sales are increasing. It is clear that the use of eBooks is more convenient and that they allow one to get involved in the story through a multimedia experience with music and lights, but what is different about physical books is the feeling of having one in your hands, the feeling of flicking through backwards and forwards, the feel and smell of the paper, the colour of the illustrations and even the sound whilst flicking.

Obviously it made perfect sense to choose The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde for your first hybrid novel! If you were to make another one, what novel would you choose? Do you even feel inclined to make another one?

I have no future plans to remediate other stories unless someone commissioned me to do it, which I would be really happy to do, but for the moment, I think if I remediated a story, it would be mine, one which would take me a while because it is quite long.

Tell us about your life in London. Any favourite places?

I’ve been living in London for two and a half years now. I came to the UK with three aims: firstly, to improve my English. Secondly, I wanted to continue my studies by taking an MA in Graphic Design, which I finished in December. My final goal is to get a job in a studio where I can develop my skills as a graphic designer before going back to Spain. I love London, otherwise I wouldn’t be here but it’s a really stressful city. I can’t believe people have lunch whilst working in front of the computer; that is unimaginable in Spain! In my opinion, two of the best places in London are Primrose Hill during a summer sunset with your partner and the other one is the night view of Tower Bridge illuminated whilst walking by the river from Bermondsey to Tower Hill. It’s a fantastic view!