The Plato's Cave

Publication Design

2019.3

A publication that visually explores the ideas and ideals of The Allegory of the Cave found in Plato’s Republic. I was particularly interested to communicate the experience of the slave, and therefore the typography responds to their perspective. For example, in a key passage of the text, the typography becomes a single line that moves across the pages to communicate how the slaves heads were fixed in one position and therefore unable to read up and down.

After finishing part of the book, I want to make it look more rigorous. I added a bookcase to it. I divided the bookcase into two parts, not one. Unlike pulling the book out, the way of opening the book with two hands emphasizes the action of “opening”. This is more relevant to the title and theme of the book as a whole - I hope people can explore and discover more information.

In the treatment of book case, I chose 240 GSM paper with strong texture. This will make them look more textural, and when I tear them apart, it will be obvious that the paper fibers are exposed, which is exactly what I want. I chose three different shades of beige and arranged them in gradient order. Make the whole book look deeper, and make the cascad- ing relationship more obvious.

The Overview of the Book

This part of the text is all about the sun. It proba- bly means “everything is possible because of the sun”, so when I design this part, I also adhere to this theme. So when the reader wants to read this part, he must first see the sun pattern on the paper. Then read through the circle of the sun.

The main idea of this part is to look at things in the most direct way. I’ve thought a lot about the design of this chapter. All of them enlarged all the words and filled the whole page, but that didn’t seem to be the same as the style of the whole book, so I gave up this practice. So I changed my mind, thinking about what kind of way people can read most directly.