The Secret Miracle project was incredibly exciting, marking my first experience with Art Direction. Tasked with visually capturing Jorge Luis Borges' evocative story about an author living in Nazi-occupied Prague sentenced to death, I sought a powerful metaphor to communicate its profound, painful themes.
Genocide represents not only the extermination of lives but the intentional erasure of human existence and identity. This understanding inspired me to reimagine the book as an archive, thoughtfully assembled by an unseen observer intent on preserving Jaromir Hladik’s memory and exposing the inhumanity of the Nazi regime. Each artifact; scanned, torn, redacted, and intentionally incomplete; was designed to feel salvaged, fragile, and urgent, emphasizing the importance of bearing witness. From arrest warrants to street signs and book covers, every element was meticulously crafted to authentically evoke 1940s Prague. Typesetting, designing, and hand-binding the book helped me turn the project into both a reconstruction of Hladik’s story and a profound act of remembrance.
Throughout the book, I used a recurring blood stain motif as a quiet, haunting reminder of the violence surrounding Hladík’s story and countless others. Beyond its literal reference to his execution, the stain symbolizes the indelible marks left by trauma. Its presence interrupts the pages, mirroring how trauma disrupts history, seeping persistently into the narrative.
Research was a huge part of this process. I spent a lot of time on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum site and their digital archives, studying real artifacts and stories to better understand this unimaginable history.
Some objects in the book, like the Nazi uniform and cigarette butt (on the left), are from that archive, credited carefully to respect their origins. Immersing myself in these archives and confronting the history of antisemitism, genocide, and systematic erasure, was extremely difficult but imperative. Including real artifacts helped ground the book in the heavy reality, that Hladik’s fictional story echoes countless real ones.
"...he was of Jewish blood, his signature had been one more on the protest against the Anschluss."
"Jaromir Hladik, the author of the unfinished drama entitled The Enemies, of Vindication of Eternity, had a dream of a long game of chess.
"On the nineteenth the authorities received a denunciation; that same evening, Jaromir Hladik was arrested."
"In 1928 he had translated the Sepher Yezirahfor the publishing house of Hermann Barsdorf."
A single black spread closes the book, marked only by a faint blood stain and the time of Hladík’s death.
Quiet, heavy, and final.
Initially, I felt significant pressure to create something deeply profound and unique on every page of this book. However, I soon discovered the power of building a clear, intentional system. Through thoughtful feedback from my professor and peers, I established a set of design rules that provided structure and consistency to the storytelling. With these foundations in place, the process evolved into finding rhythm; following the established guidelines, then intentionally breaking them to create subtle moments of surprise and depth. Balancing control and disruption brought a sense of cohesion without sacrificing freshness, ultimately making the final piece feel complete and engaging.