BENEATH THE SURFACE
Typography 1 Book Design Project
Spring 2023 | Saint Louis, Missouri
Instructor: Becca Leffell Koren
Skills: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Indesign
An experimental editorial project that transforms a written article into a visceral typographic experience, using torn paper, crumpled foil, and constrained layouts to explore the ethics of human dominance over animals. Through tactile materials and emotionally-driven composition, the piece pushes typography beyond legibility into a space of confrontation and empathy.
How can typography do more than inform — how can it make someone feel the moral discomfort of a topic? This project began with a prompt to interpret an article through visual design. The challenge was to use only analog techniques and typographic manipulation — no imagery — to express the emotional and ethical depth of the article’s argument on human-animal relationships.
CHALLENGE
CONCEPT
Tasked with interpreting an article about human dominance over animals, I experimented with various analog techniques to capture and express the raw emotional undercurrent of the text. Materials like plastic wrap were used to convey a sense of suffocation and confinement. Layered tracing paper created a fading, echo-like effect, representing the emotional distance and ignorance many people maintain toward animal suffering; an awareness that’s often overlooked or deliberately avoided.
To visually reflect the fractured relationship between humans and animals, I used torn and ripped paper to create a sense of rupture and discomfort. Crumpled aluminum foil was layered into the spreads as both a reference to cages and a metaphor for animal skin, evoking the vulnerability of their bodies under human control. I treated typography not just as content, but as material, something to press, tear, confine, and manipulate. Text was vertically compressed and tightly spaced, creating a visual tension that mirrored the idea of being trapped or silenced.
Throughout the piece, bold red accents were used sparingly but intentionally—signaling pain, urgency, and a demand for attention. This analog-driven, hands-on approach allowed me to engage deeply with the emotional weight of the article, using materiality, texture, and typographic expression to immerse the reader in its message.