Dante's Inferno

Team:

Solo project

My Role:

Research, Book Design, Book Binding

Introduction:

This project was designed during the Graphic Design III class at Politecnico di Bari, where students were asked to design or redesign a book. I explored how the spatial position of the writing can affect the reader's engagement and how the interaction between the reader and the text can be improved.After multiple researches and experimentations I redesigned Dante's masterpiece, "La Divina Commedia", with the aim of enhancing the instructive purpose of the poem by involving more the reader.

Research:

I researched what happens when the text is treated as an image and relationship between text and space. We conventionally think at the text as a static system, so I investigated what happens when the text is considered as a fluid tool that adapts its shape to the content and meaning it conveys.

Design:

I started rethinking the conventional position of the writing and allocating the poem into three columns according to the character who is speaking.
Some suggestive words are collocated on the right side of the page, and as hell becomes deeper through the chapters, the number of words increases. In this way, the readers can feel the same anguished emotions which Dante feels during this journey.
The fold-out system of the book was designed and bound, by hand, to represent the sinking into the chasm of hell.

Learnings:

The biggest challenge faced in this project was to approach the structure of Dante’s Inferno in a non-traditional way while respecting and communicating the historical and cultural importance of Dante’s poem. In addition, hand tooling the book required extreme precision while folding and gluing the pages.

I discovered how the layout of the page can be something dynamic and change according to meaning that the text is conveying. Moreover I learnt how to consider text as a visual tool to help the reader understand more about what’s happening by just taking a quick look rather than reading.