Visualize

My capstone project in my final year of university. In this project, I am addressing the lesser known qualities of ADHD through the experiential and sensory qualities. I do this through a hand-bound book. The tagline for my book is “empathy through experience.” Being able to have a visual understanding of ADHD will allow others to have a better understanding.

Workshop

In the initial stages of research, I conducted a workshop where individuals would draw what ADHD meant to them. We did so in highlighters as the tool felt like it had the same chaotic, vibrant energy as ADHD. When I sifted through the results I noticed that there were common themes found throughout the drawings which I began to channel as I was going forward with my iterating. I created a zine from this experience which was accompanied by a social media post to further elaborate which could be found on the belly band.

Aesthetic

Going forward with the highlighter, I knew it wouldn’t print well in a traditional setting. With this in mind I decided to go with a Risograph printer. The noisy qualities proved to mirror adhd qualities.

Spreads

Through the book, I employ three different kinds of spreads to walk people through adhd: experiential, photographic and writings. This is an example of an experiential piece. It breaks convention of a typical book, just as adhd tends to break from the norm. This spread on the surface appears to be a cohesive idea or thought but further unfolds to reveal that these components that make up a thought are individual living things that can stand on their own or come together as a collective to form this picture.

My photographic spreads allow me to situate how I’m feeling and where I am feeling it. I add more noise to these photos as adhd can feel like a constant buzzing. I adjust how blurry sections are—sometimes I’m trying to understand the situation but I’m having a hard time seeing the whole picture.

My writings allow me to address a plethora of things, such as my approach to situations and preconceived notions, while also permitting me moments of pause to take a breather from the ADHD chaos.

The Book

When considering my layout I was careful to balance the three kinds of spreads so that the diversity of content was equitable. The content itself jumps around—just as my thoughts tend to do. Most of the spreads can be read independently of each other and you can start anywhere to still get the narrative. To reinforce the divergence from the typical book I put my table of contents in the middle with the pages put in a random order with page numbers that don’t appear in the book. This visual element represents my thoughts in that the way I am interpreting situations feels like I should have some sort of guide but when I look to navigate, I’m getting lost in the flow of ideas.

Experience Beyond

I came up with some ways to experience ADHD that supplement the book. I created AR cards which are stored in the back of the book. When scanned you can interact with the book in a whole new way, allowing you to feel ADHD through animations that the viewer interacts with.

I also set out to make a garment which matches with the subject. I stained a pair of overalls with risograph masters. This process is one that I asked around to get some pointers, though most people I went to hadn’t heard of anyone using this dyeing process before which meant I had to do some experimenting before to get to my final product. This made the process exciting and fulfilling to get the vibrant results that I did.

The compartmentalized colors represent different thoughts that get isolated while other colors bleed because some of my ideas feel like they are intertwined even as their own thought. The seemingly random arrangement of thoughts are important because they sculpt an environment which informs how I approach the world.

As a way to walk people through my book, I made a video encapsulation of the project’s full scope. For the grad show, it was difficult to show off some of the nuances in massive detail so this video hits on all the points: book, AR and my overalls in action.

Promotion

To promote the work I contacted CityNews to raise awareness on the topic. One of the primary goals of this project is to bridge the informational gap on what it is like to live with ADHD which I was able to articulate in the interview. Watch the segment here.

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