ADCN Yearbook

A book with feelings. One that hides in silence until you touch it. Created for the ADCN Yearbook, it comes alive through attention.

For the Art Directors Club Netherlands Yearbook, twelve studios were invited to design a unique cover. I thought: what if a book could have emotions?

Many beautiful design books end up as trophies on a shelf. Admired, but never opened. I imagined them slowly fading away from neglect, only to light up again when someone finally reads them.

So we designed exactly that: a book that responds to attention.

The cover uses heat-sensitive ink and hidden movement sensors. When untouched, it’s black... quiet and withdrawn. But when you pick it up, the motion triggers a system that subtly heats the cover: revealing the true design.

The cover was built around the theme “Rhetoric as the art of design.”
Just as rhetoric uses logos, ethos and pathos to move people, design also balances logic, credibility, and emotion. We invited three illustrators, each to interpret one of these classical pillar, layering their visuals into a single composition.

A book that feels what every piece of creativity feels: the joy of being seen.

My role: concept, creative direction. Work done at Morrow.