Still Waters Run Deep
Shreya Razak
Dreaming is universal. What we experience during sleep varies from our innermost desires to our deepest fears, which has made the discovery of the origins and possible meanings of dreams a central experience across cultures. Philosophers and scientists have studied how an individual’s life experiences manifest themselves in their unconscious through dreams, and sought to understand their abnormalities as well: recurring dreams, sleep-talking and even sleep paralysis. Yet, despite advances in technology and our understanding of the human body, the experience of dreaming remains largely intangible.
Still Waters Run Deep is a set of books that describe the human experience of dreaming in two ways, through personal recollections and academic texts. The first book, Dreams, is a history of dream studies and their neurobiology. The second book, Disorders, details a selection of parasomnias and other sleep disorders, including their symptoms, causes, and methods of treatment.
The academic content of each book is modeled after the aesthetic of vintage science textbooks and encyclopedias, which offer an objective approach to the text. In contrast, the dream recollections respond to the hazy or disjointed feeling of being in a dream or remembering one afterwards. The typography is manipulated to warp and ripple as a dream would. Through each book’s signature structure, alternation of page size and paper type, the cyclical nature of sleep is reflected.