Background
The theme of this personal project focuses on issues related to sensory disorders, specifically sensory processing disorder. This condition affects how the brain receives and responds to sensory information, impacting one or multiple senses, such as hearing, touch, or taste. Individuals may be either over- or under-responsive to sensory inputs. My investigation will involve temporarily removing one commonly used sense—sight—to explore how it affects the remaining senses: smell, hearing, touch, and taste. I will document these sensory experiences through various media and create a visual piece to communicate these findings to those who do not experience the same sensory challenges.
Blindness/Visual Impairment
Blindness generally refers to a significant loss of vision that cannot be corrected with glasses or contact lenses. Individuals with vision worse than 20/200 with corrective lenses are classified as legally blind. Visual impairment includes both partial and complete loss of sight, which can occur suddenly or gradually. The term "blindness" often denotes a total loss of vision.
How Blind and Visually Impaired People Perceive the World
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), over 40 million people worldwide are blind. Research from the University of Bath explores how blindness affects a person's perception and understanding of the world, including how they utilise their remaining senses to gather information about their surroundings.
Studies show that blind individuals rely on their other senses—sound, touch, taste, and smell—to perceive their environment. Neuroscientific research indicates that when vision is lost, the brain reorganises itself, enhancing the remaining senses. For example, when reading a book without sight, the brain reassigns the areas previously used for visual processing to handle tactile information from the fingertips. While sight is a primarily rational sense, smell, taste, and touch connect more directly with the brain's emotional and memory centres.
Examples of Designers and Typographers Using Other Senses
Several designers and typographers utilise their remaining senses to guide and enrich their work, demonstrating how other sensory experiences can influence creative processes.
David Genco's Synesthetic Calculus explores how numbers are linked to various senses like gender, colour, taste, smell, sound, or shape. Viewers interact with 100 videos through a calculator, creating new sequences with each action. This allows them to connect numbers in a personal way, offering a unique method for memorising large numbers.
Kate McLean creates maps using colourful dots and changing circles to represent smells from various cities. By conducting “smell walks,” she collects data on different odors—like “canal,” “fresh leafy rain,” and “laundry”—from people, noting their location, intensity, description, and associations. Each smell is assigned a colour and marked on the maps.
My Approach
I was inspired by McLean's method of visualising data through the sense of smell, which led to meaningful outcomes. I plan to use a similar approach but with text to visualise my own senses. Initially, I aimed to test whether blind or visually impaired people have heightened other senses. To explore this, I blindfolded myself in a controlled setting to document my sensory experiences and evaluate the theory. My hypothesis proved correct, showing that my remaining senses were indeed heightened, with sound being particularly dominant. The question now is whether there is an emotional connection to sound when it is the primary sense and whether I can perceive it fully without sight.
When I recorded the atmosphere at Oxford Circus, the bustling environment proved advantageous for capturing a variety of sounds. During the recording, I picked up a multitude of noises within a short time frame. These included the chatter and interactions of people, the rumble of vehicles on the street, the beeping of traffic lights, and even the distant sound of wind howling. In just five minutes, the array of sounds was overwhelming.
To contrast the bustling Oxford Circus with a quieter environment, I recorded sounds in a minimalist area. At Ditton Meadows, I captured the varied chirps of birds and occasionally heard owls hooting in the distance. Towards the end of the recording, I also picked up the sound of a horse neighing. Upon reflection, I realised that a less busy location can produce more authentic and distinctive sounds.
I will create a concertina book related to the concept of sound. During my recording of voice notes, there will be a flow of sound waves over a period of five minutes. My objective will be to produce a 10-page concertina that represents the duration of the recorded sounds within that five-minute timeframe
As you imagine wind to be free-flowing, I gave that similar element in my text, as each letter is continuing across the page. As the recording was approximately five minutes, the sound of wind Felt endless. Instead of using the word “Whoosh,” I use the word “Woo” because the wind was humming at a steady pace in five minutes.
To find inspiration, I explored the work of typographer James Victore. I was fascinated by how he integrates two key elements: the psychological impact of text tone, which adds an emotional dimension, and the use of a single medium. Victoire’s approach involves techniques like rubbing, smudging, and applying ink with a thin paintbrush to shape visual text. His work offers me insights into how I can create my visual book using only one medium—acrylic paint.
I imagine the sounds of Oxford Circus and express them solely through the use of blank acrylic paint.
I also visualise the sounds of Ditton Meadows using only black acrylic paint, contrasting this with the way I represent the sounds of Oxford Circus through blank acrylic paint.
My tutor grasped my concept but noted that the layout did not suit the purpose of a concertina book. When I exported my draft, each page was saved separately. My tutor clarified that a concertina book should be formatted as a single continuous sheet rather than individual pages.
When explaining my concept to a peer, I mentioned that I was creating two concertina books: one focusing on the sounds of a busy environment like Oxford Circus, and the other on a minimalist area such as Ditton Meadows. After reviewing the outcomes, she pointed out that the books did not effectively convey the intended message. She noted that the second book, themed around minimalism, should feature fewer sounds compared to the louder, more hectic environment of the first book. She observed that the busy book had some dynamic elements and suggested that each frame should represent different arrangements or developments. Taking her advice into account, I realised that to address the brief on comparing sounds, I needed to connect both books. Consequently, I decided to merge the two books into one and sketched a few concepts for the composition of the new concertina book..
To combine both books into one concertina book, I will merge the sounds of Oxford Circus and Ditton Meadows into a unified design. The layout will alternate between the vibrant, noisy scenes of Oxford Circus and the serene, minimalistic sounds of Ditton Meadows, creating a dynamic contrast. Using acrylic paint, I will visually represent the auditory differences, with each section reflecting the intensity of the sounds. The final composition will seamlessly integrate elements from both themes, offering a continuous, immersive experience that captures the essence of both environments.
To find inspiration for my book, I explored the work of Marinetti, a futuristic artist and typographer. I was intrigued by how he used typefaces to convey movement and flow, integrating typographical and literary conventions into his compositions. I also admired his approach to freely arranging words, creating a grammatical connection without adhering to traditional phrases and sentences.
I have added digital typography as the primary medium for my concertina book, in addition to the acrylic paint. Inspired by Marinetti’s approach to typography, which uses type to convey movement and flow, I will now use digital tools to manipulate the text. This method provides greater flexibility, allowing me to adjust font size, thickness, and letter spacing without limitations. For instance, by experimenting with a typeface like Futura in Adobe Illustrator, I can create abstract effects that introduce movement and flow. Unlike the static appearance of acrylic-painted text, digital typography offers more freedom to explore dynamic visual forms, helping to define the direction of my theme.
I took my peer’s advice on utilising space effectively. While examining existing futurist artwork, I observed that they incorporate space as a key element in their compositions, including the height and weight of each letter to shape the visual piece. I applied these principles to design the new front cover concept. Given that Oxford Circus is both busy and overcrowded, I represented this atmosphere visually through text as a metaphor.
To highlight the contrast between the two books, I made several modifications to the front covers. For example, the front cover of “Sounds: Ditton Meadows” features fewer characters, reflecting the minimalistic nature of the recorded environment compared to the bustling atmosphere of “Sounds: Oxford Circus.” This effectively distinguishes the two books.
At this stage, I began reflecting on my previous book page design that depicted the wind using acrylic paint. Upon reviewing the visuals, I noticed that each page had a uniform tone, while the recorded sound of the wind varied in style over time. For example, the sound changed every eight seconds. With this in mind, I created a range of sounds using the same brushstroke technique to visually represent the wind's different tones.
Here are the examples I’ve created. As you can see, each letter comes from the same typeface, Futura, but I used different font styles to maintain the theme while illustrating the distinctiveness of each sound. Despite this variation, I retained the tapping noise from the previous book design to establish a connection. Listening to the voice recording, I could hear typing noises consistently throughout the footage.
When speaking to my tutor, he explained that the sounds are too similar when visualised, using the same words but changing the style by using a different tool. He went further on that; I needed to listen to the recording and analyse what sounds birds make. He gave me an example the using the phonetic alphabet to visualise what says birds make—thinking out of the box.
The phonetic alphabet is a system in which individual letters correspond to specific sounds, making it easier to distinguish between similar-sounding letters and words. For instance, "m" and "n" often sound alike, but the phonetic method clearly differentiates them. This approach is relevant to the second book, which features sounds of birds chirping and other natural sounds.
When discussing with my tutor, he pointed out that the sounds appeared too similar when visualised using the same words with different styles. He suggested I listen to the recording more closely and analyse the specific sounds birds make. He recommended using the phonetic alphabet to visualise bird sounds, encouraging me to think outside.
Here is an example from the Oxford Circus book: the sound of vehicles revving their engines on the road. To visualize this sound, I aimed to avoid a literal representation. Instead, I applied the phonetic alphabet method, using "o" to represent the "ou" sound, capturing the humming noise of the vehicles.
When birds chirp, they produce a small, high-pitched sound that, while not as clear as human speech, is very distinctive. Referring to the phonetic alphabet, the letter "T" pronounced as "ti" sounds similar to a bird chirping. This is the basis for my use of the letter "t" to represent bird sounds.
At the 41-second mark of the recording, I heard the faint sound of a pedestrian walking. To visually represent this sound, I used the same tapping noise technique I had previously created with acrylic paint, maintaining consistency between both books.
When discussing my book's concept with a peer, I explained how each sound is distinctive. She noted that the text did not effectively convey this message. Her advice was to use different typefaces while keeping the medium consistent—digital typography. As a result, I made several adjustments, especially to the front covers of the concertina book. I used Futura for the letter S, Bodoni for O, Big Caslon for U, Cocogoose for N, Verdana for D, and Plantagenet Cherokee for S.
Here are the front cover designs for both books, based on the concertina format. I preserved the original layout but updated the text. The cover for "Sounds: Oxford Circus" features all the words to illustrate the busyness of each letter, representing the hectic nature of the area. Conversely, the cover with fewer letters is for "Sounds: Ditton Meadows," reflecting the minimalistic aspect of that location.
I printed the concertina book prototype to see if the front covers are legible. I have to say; I prefer these covers to the previous one because the text answers how sounds can be distinctive and unique by using different typefaces.
I feel the updated layout effectively reflects the recording, highlighting the uniqueness of each sound. The sounds are depicted with greater depth compared to the previous format, where the typeface was not chosen with as much care. Additionally, the text now aligns better with the intensity of the sounds; for instance, a weak sound is represented with a fainter appearance, whereas a loud and powerful sound is depicted more prominently.
The completed layout design of my concertina book.