passion project
conceptual print design
Letters of Ignorance
This titleless book is a metaphor for human ignorance. It contains only two letters from Kurt Vonnegut: one from during the war, and one from years later. Both are deeply entangled with his famous book Slaughterhouse-Five.
A Book of Two Letters
The first letter, only legible on the side engraved with the words “So it goes”, is a letter from young Kurt Vonnegut to his family. In it, he explains that all throughout his time in WWII everyone around him kept dying, yet he did not. The events he describes in this letter were a direct inspiration for Slaughterhouse-Five. This is paired with the laser-etched quote “So it goes.” from that novel. It is said every time someone dies in the book.
The second letter, only legible from the other side, is from a much older Vonnegut to the dean of a high school that burned its copies of Slaughterhouse-Five in its furnaces for being immoral, depraved, and anti-christian. In this letter, he defends himself as an author and his work. He points out to the dean that burning books is a sign of ignorance. On the cover of this letter is another quote from Slaughterhouse-Five. A quote that drove the entire design of this book: “But among them was this poor earthing, and his head was encased… There was only one eyehole through which he could look.” This quote is said by an alien attempting to describe the ignorance of human perception.
I physically embodied this quote into a book in which you could only read one line of text at a time forcing the reader to confront this frustrating sense of ignorance themselves. Reading is such a fundamental part of learning and expanding our understanding beyond ourselves. Unfortunately, this concept piece about ignorance is still relevant to this day, as books continue to be needlessly banned across the country.