Book Design
Checks, Balances, & Nukes is a book translation of the Radiolab podcast episode titled Nukes. The book extracts themes of political bureaucracy and the dissection of time, resulting in an experimental accordion book that has a multitude of connections to military documents. With a visible and receding grid and progressively more chaotic body text, the books is in direct relaitonship with the content's narration about the weakening of government systems. The book can be read section by section with additional content in the folders on the inside covers or can be displayed opened up to show a bomb's explosion in seven frames.
PROCESS
This book contains two key visual languages. The first is the grid that represents systemic policy and governance and the other is motion blur, freezing the time within these rapid, destructive, and stressful moments. Both of these visual languages are prominent in the book and the book's relationship with governemnt is intensified by the form itself. The physicality of books is always important to me, so finding a form that resembles both the files of government and then also opens up to speak to a dissection of a moment was crucial.
I wanted the actual process of interacting with the book to be active and complex, as if the reader themselves is declassifying this information. Portions of the podcast are printed outside of the book with design that resembles government issued documents matching the content of that section. These documents are held within the form of the book itself with folders on each cover. There are also related blueprints and ephemera printed on transparent paper scattered within the book.