ISTD
Project 04: Putting Things in Order
A publication designed in response to the 2021 ‘Putting Things in Order’ brief released by the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD). Students were asked to make a primarily typographic publication, documenting obscure ways of ordering and classifying.
Memories are an obscure and ever-changing act for all of us, but its order is more significant than most of us might realise. Memory order is a critical component to a debilitating and life-changing illness — dementia. My project seeks to examine the disruption, disorder and debilitation cause by the demented mind and its own attempt to assemble and order those memories. For many whom might watch their loved one’s suffering in pain or confusion, as well as for those who seek to learn more, my publication aims to kindle empathy within them.
It is difficult to determine whether it is the ‘ordering’ or ‘unordering’ of memories that is the true culprit to dementia. It would make sense that the ‘unordering’ is what has disrupted the norm, a chronological set of moments that we bury in our minds until recalled. However, I concluded that the act of recollecting and assembling (or ordering) of memories is what causes confusion.
The publication is a reordering of non-fictional and fictional accounts of first-hand experiences with dementia. Treating these excerpts as passages, I broke them up and reordered them in an attempt to make ‘sense,’ just as the demented mind might. The haphazard ordering aligns with their confusion and inability to grasp a sense of self and represents that impaired cognition. The folio records page numbers in a descending order to mimic how Dementia patients live in the past, often recalling their earliest memories. As those memories are the most deeply ingrained within their minds, passages from the text, ‘Elizabeth is Missing’ have been typeset from the outer margins to inner margins in a chronological fashion to show this gradual transition from recent to old, superficial to deep. Much of the typesetting focuses on expressing the emotive.
Designed to be a frustrating read, the reader’s journey is meant to mimic the patient’s experience. In such a way, I hope to incite a more empathetic understanding from the audience. As dementia distorts memories and time, my publication makes and attempt to represent that distortion and the deep-rooted terror that accompanies that.
https://issuu.com/maggiewqhe/docs/maggie_istd_rework_corrected
