The Whale

In The Whale, obesity turns breathing into constant effort:
every movement demands air. This fanzine takes the film’s screenplay and rebuilds it as a typographic body that moves forward with difficulty, so the text is read at the pace of Charlie’s breath.

The publication is divided into five chapters, each a phase
of breathing: Inhalation, Contraction, Apnea, Exhalation and Collapse. The type size stays fixed at 8 pt, and tracking becomes the main expressive tool. It tightens to −10 in Apnea, where lines overlap
and the page runs out of air, then opens to 900 in Collapse, where
a single stretched word, pause, is left alone on a blank page.

Cuts, jumps and shifts in leading create pauses, and white space works as narrative, standing in for silence and recovery.
By concentrating or scattering the text, the design forces a slow, heavy reading, so the reader doesn’t just see Charlie’s struggle
but goes through it.