Martina Gallo

Three Beige Books

A series of books about erasure, loneliness, and shared differences

For this series, each central concept was curated based on a physical item or idea, which later informed each book's design and content. In order, they are "Erase Me", "At Night, Alone", and "Behold! I've brought you a man!"

1. Erase Me!

This publication was inspired by a mundane, everyday object: an eraser. You might erase something to clean marks, remove mistakes, or completely start over. However simple, the act of erasing is also part of our ability to comprehend language. Erasing words erases speech, therefore, it is just as important to understand how and why certain things are removed from a narrative. This book is centered around multiple acts of erasure—and whether each was purposeful (ie. censorship), inevitable (erosion), or accidental (mistakes). Some notable moments in "Erase Me" include a laser-cut dust jacket and a "missing" word key in the back of the book.

2. At Night, Alone...

This publication is centered around physical manifestations of isolation and loneliness. So much art has been (in)famously borne from suffering from solitude. While so much media surrounding reclusion is bleak, there are positives to reserving time for oneself away from the noise of the outside world. Shown here is an unfolded visualization of the dust jacket for "At Night, Alone". It shows stills from a short animation, paired with descriptive captions paired with timestamps on the opposite side of the page.

3. Behold! I've brought you a man!

Behold! is a publication founded around the phrase “Same, But Different”. As part of our brain's ability to keep us alive, we cultivate the skill of recognizing patterns, even if at that moment, they aren't at the forefront of our minds. Finding similarities between different people, places, things, etc. is a fleeting connection, but often yields interesting matches. The front & back covers are a direct reference to a famous, Ancient Greek anecdote: "According to Diogenes Laërtius, when Plato gave the tongue-in-cheek definition of man as "featherless bipeds", Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato's Academy, saying, "Behold! I've brought you a man", and so the academy added "with broad flat nails" to the definition."