postdiluvian
editorial design | art direction | bookbinding
The Japanese character for the word "crisis" combines two characters - one for "danger" and one for "opportunity." This book uses that conceptual structure to explore the impending climate change crisis.
This book contains two powerful speeches concerning climate change and the need to act to prevent it. The first, Al Gore's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, warns of the extreme severity of the crisis, while the second, Paul Hawkin's University of Portland commencement address, reminds the audience of the human family's ability to adapt in the face of great adversity.
I used an experimental grid system that becomes more claustrophobic and disrupted as the reader proceeds through the first speech, and gradually settles throughout the second. I combined this with imagery made by dripping and bubbling black ink, which evokes rising sea levels, as well as the fossil fuels and carbon emissions that are at the heart of the issue.
I bound the book with a Japanese style binding, and used fragile, semi-translucent paper that establishes a wistful, postdiluvian sense of both broadly felt and personal tragedy.
