Re/De/Sign
Re/De/Sign is a two-part publication project exploring how meaning is constructed, disrupted and misread within graphic design systems. It grew from a sustained interest in semiotics — particularly the tension between structuralist design, where clarity and consistency establish authority, and post-structuralist thinking, where meaning is unstable, shifting with context, habit and the reader.
Research and Book Design
The first publication is a research and dissertation piece, building a theoretical framework through writers including Roland Barthes, Derrida and John Berger, and visual references ranging from Kinneir and Calvert's UK road sign system to Elliot Earls and Neville Brody. The second sits alongside it as a practical, image-led companion, a hand-bound Coptic book of experiments that lets the reader encounter the ideas directly rather than just read about them. Typography is fragmented, signs are altered, symbols are stripped of context, and meaning is made to slip. The two publications are designed to work together: one builds the argument, the other puts it in your hands.
Both were hand-bound and printed using a mix of methods. Material and structural decisions throughout, such as paper weight, scale, colour, interruption are deliberate and used to control pace and shift the reader between moments of recognition and uncertainty. The visual systems that surround us daily are rarely as neutral as they seem, and this project is an attempt to make that visible.
