For the final project of my sophomore year Design Studio I class at RISD, I made a survival guide for tall people that would either only be accessible to those tall enough to understand the daily annoyances of height, or be so unwieldy and awkward to use that it could translate this annoyance to those who don’t reach the height requirement.
The book stands at 77” tall (just like me) and about 4” wide (a little thinner than me) and features sections on problems found at home, while traveling, shopping for new clothes, and socializing with people of differing heights. The book also includes a 77” long bookmark that serves as a measuring device to compare yourself to famous people and common objects and keep track of your height in relation to the world around you.
The book is made up of around 20 pages of text that slowly stretch the further down the page they are placed, making it so that you would have to be tall enough to peer down the book in order to comfortably read it.
I also shared some photos to my TikTok account where the video has garnered over 115k views with dozen of comments that relate to my struggles, find the humor in the size of the book, or just think its a fun art project.
You can view the pages in full here.
"Surviving Height: A Short Guide For Tall People" was also featured in the "10th Baker & Whitehall Student Artists' Book Contest" and was exhibited in RISD's Fleet Library from February 29, 2024 through the end of the 2023-24 academic year.
Layout designed in Adobe Indesign, illustrations done in Photoshop. Assembled with paper, chipboard, paper cement, and black spiral binding.
