Psychedelics: Lifting the Veil
This book uses the transcript of a TED talk given by Robert Carhartt-Harris which discusses the ways in which psychedelics can be used as medications for mental illnesses. It also uses the lyrics to Pink Floyds’ “Comfortably Numb” as a supplementary text to the speech. I chose this song as a juxtaposition to the body text to bring an atmospheric, lyrical, and emotional response to the otherwise scientific speech. The song discusses depression and the feeling of numbness that can come along with it.
Alongside the text, I chose to feature the illustrations of Oliver Hibert, since they do an amazing job of conveying the psychedelic experiences occurring within individuals who struggle with mental illness.
The back cover uses an illustration by Oliver Hibert. In order to create a three-dimensional effect, I cut out the hands of the illustration and glued them on top of the outside cover, creating the illusion that the illustration is crawling out of the book. The book discusses depression as something that one must work to climb out of, and I felt that this cover supported that idea.
To bind this book, I chose a method called wire-edge binding. Each page is french-folded, glued together, and hole punched. Then, along the hole-punched edge, wire is inserted within each page. These wires are then tied together across the pages to bind the book.
I chose this binding method because it created a textured look along the spine of the book. It also allowed me to to use black metallic paper along the spine, since the wires needed to be folded into paper before being inserted into the book. I wanted the book to include a variety of textures and colors, since the topic is so sensory-oriented, so this binding method was ideal.
I chose to give the book black pages so that colors would feel almost as though they were being swallowed by the darkness, or as though they are expanding into it. I juxtaposed the neon, rainbow colors with the stark black pages in order to convey the feeling of a psychedelic experience and the feeling of depression simultaneously
I used three colors, (pink, purple, and green) for the pull quotes and secondary text. Since the binding is exposed on the inside, on each page the colors of string interact with the words on the page in a different way.
The main body text of the book is white on each page and is set in Fairplex Wide. The secondary text is also set in Fairplex wide but colored in green, pink, and purple. It appears in two ways, sometimes set next to the body text and other times set as a full-page pull-quote.