— PROJECT NAME
Blindness
— ROLE
Print Design
Epub Design
— DATE
Spring 2025
— SPECS
Adobe Indesign
Fixed Epub
— PAPER
Mohawk Ultrawhite Superfine
iTone at 148gsm
— EPUB DOWNLOAD
Unfolding Narratives was a project from my masters degree that required the creation of a book in print and digital form. Exploring hybrid publishing and a non-linear reading experience, I was tasked with finding open-source materials to use in designing a digital and print experience. A big aspect of this project was adapting the formats to the software and exploring how to mimic the behaviour of the design in multiple structures.
Blindness is a comment on accessibility for individuals with visual impairments. Working with a portion of the book by José Saramago of the same name, I created a reading experience that slowly degrades from a ‘normal’ typesetting to what a blind individual would need to interact with the material. In the print version, the text slowly degrades into braille over the course of approximately sixty pages. The digital version also degrades, but instead of braille the text is invisible and an audio file plays the missing words.
As soon as I decided to include braille in my project, I jumped into research regarding how to typeset it correctly. I spent a lot of time reading articles and manuals on how to correctly set braille in a book, and conducted research to find the right paper and binding method for braille novels. The resulting product uses 148 gsm paper (which is in the range of weights braille novels employ) and is coil bound. Once the entirety of the text was correctly set braille, I hand-debossed the dots to emulate the look and function of an actual braille novel.
