Full book pdf
Flipping through the book
I originally created this project because I was going through a hard time and found myself constantly folding to thoughts and anxieties I knew weren’t true. In the past I had experienced a transformation through the act of making and putting word to page - it almost felt like the friction to make an object increased the internalization of the message I was trying to convey.
In the past I had done poetic comics to relay the messages I was telling myself. but this time I was more curious about the source. As an atheist with the absence of a bible, how did I set my moral compass and value system?
I found that it was a mixture of found images on the internet and conversations I had with friends. I then arranged all the ones that replayed in my mind into two different books - one around vulnerability and forgiveness to combat my worry of things going wrong out of my control, and the other about trusting the process and doing the work to change my circumstances, even if it seems to be going no where.
Figma file setup - screenshots of the quotes and meme inserts. If it was a quote from real life, I overlaid an abstraction of its message on top.
Below is an are.na channel of the found media
https://www.are.na/connie/words-of-great-meaning
Throughout this process, I found the higher level of effort was not in putting the book together but the intricacies of the printing process. For example, because I was designing in Figma, I would eyeball margins to find that I didn’t leave enough space for the spiral. Hole punching multiple thin sheets was also difficult, one misstep and the hole could hit the margin. Same thing with cutting, with thin margins and one misstep and it could render many pages unusable. As a result it took several hours to make 5 books (with only two being absolutely perfect). Printing on vellum was difficult because not all risograph printers accommodated for it.
However what struck me was the universality of some of the quotes. Showing this at zine fairs I’ve had several conversations with others being entranced by its format. Although memetic and warped from several users, I think found and imperfect images on the internet are just as valid as ancient texts to providing guidance on how to live a better life.
They resonate strongly enough to have passed through so many hands in the first place, to the point where the original source is lost.
Several of the prototypes for the book.