Black Holes
in Space
and Brains
We wanted to create a book about human oblivion and black holes. The connection between these topics is that black holes are a metaphor for oblivion: Everything that passes the event horizon of a black hole is sucked into it and disappears – just like memories or thoughts we forget.
The introduction, taken from »A Briefer History of Time« by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, deals with real black holes in space and leads over to the main body of the book: human oblivion as black holes in brains. The chapters on forgetting are accompanied by a couple of mnemo techiques that are used for the memorization of facts, information and vocabulary. In the text, these mnemo techniques are applied by the use of graphical and typographical figures. Moreover, they are linked to the last chapter where detailed information on the respective techniques are provided. In the book you can also find appealing illustrations, mindmaps (like star maps), graphics and pictures of galaxies with a black hole in their center for separating the single chapters.
While a considerable amount of research partly based on psychology literature, we decided on the adequate layout details, materials and printing parameters. It was very important to us that every design decision could be related to the overall topics black holes and oblivion. Because of the content’s complexity, the layout had to be simple. For example, we refrained from the use of colours since it would not fit into the concept of black holes. Also for this reason, the book was printed with an Indigo printing machine which produces an extremely deep black tone, resembling the deep darkness of a black hole. The introduction and the mnemo techniques chapter were set white on black in order to create a contrast and cosmic appearance. For readability and distinction we used two different fonts: Satyr for the oblivion part and Neutraface 2 for all the rest.- - -
format: 130 x 190 mm
136 pages, hardcover
common project by Fynn Scheewe, Yannick Wolff and Milka Steciak
tutor: Prof. Johannes Bergerhausen
HS Mainz University of Applied Sciences 2014
HS Mainz University of Applied Sciences 2014
