John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is an essential document in the founding of the United States and its values - the origin of the phrase "tabula rasa," or "blank slate," which would lead to the idea that "all men are created equal."  Yet outside of high school history classes, it is infrequently remembered, and less frequently read, perhaps in part due to the austerity of its language, the cold, microscopic empiricism of its logic, and the lengthy twists and turns of tangential arguments.

For this reason, I set out to create a book whose design, while retaining essential elements of the text's argument, would have the exact opposite voice of the author's deeply formal writing style. 

I created a coloring book - a tongue-in-cheek reference to Locke's most famous phrase.  I made coloring pages based on the botanical illustrations that proliferated during the Enlightenment Era, a time in which the scientific method - whose foundations can be found in Locke's deep attachment to observation and the use of logic - prevailed.  Pull quotes are scattered amongst the foliage, requiring the viewer to use their a-priori knowledge to sort letterform from leaf. 

I built a book box, complete with a compartment for crayons, in which to store multiple copies of the booklet, which was printed on newsprint to further distance the text from the formality of the language, and to make readers more comfortable with the dastardly idea of coloring in books. Boisterous Clarendon serves as the typeface for the text’s numbered sections and pull quotes.