Selected Editorial Work
Fall 2025
After the Image
An exploration of grief, how it lives in memory, and in the empty spaces memory leaves behind.
After the Image pairs a printed book with an interactive website. The book is divided into five chapters, each centered around an essay addressing grief, memory, and loss. This section focuses specifically on the editorial development of the project.
I began with an interest in memory and photography: specifically, how manipulating an image could visually represent the way memories of a person change and disappear over time.
2. Image Experementation
I experimented with different ways of removing information from photographs to represent the gradual deterioration of memory. The final system primarily uses blurring and pixelation.
I intentionally avoided more abrupt techniques, such as completely cutting figures out of photographs. Instead, the transformations become progressively more severe throughout the book, allowing the disappearance to feel gradual rather than immediate.
I experimented with different ways of removing information from photographs to represent the gradual deterioration of memory. The final system primarily uses blurring and pixelation.
I intentionally avoided more abrupt techniques, such as completely cutting figures out of photographs. Instead, the transformations become progressively more severe throughout the book, allowing the disappearance to feel gradual rather than immediate.
The layout follows the same progression as the image treatment. Early chapters contain clearer, brighter photographs, while later chapters gradually isolate, blur, pixelate, and obscure their subjects. Images are extend full bleed, so they remain the main element of each spread.
Georgia was selected for the body text because its traditional serif forms give the writing a more intimate, literary quality that complements the personal subject matter. In selected spreads, text begins to overlap the disappearing figure, allowing typography itself to participate in the visual metaphor of a memory being lost.
Throughout the book, images act as the primary communication tool. Typography in this case supports the emotional pacing of the narrative. Image treatment, scale, positioning, and typography become progressively more disruptive as the book moves forward, creating a visual system that mirrors the inevitable loss of memory.
Circles is an editorial project built from a photographic collection of circular forms found throughout New York City. The zine combines three written passages with photography to explore connections between the geometry of a circle and ideas around repetition, continuity, and life.
1. Research
I began by walking through New York and documenting circular forms in the built environment, eventually creating an archive of approximately 150 photographs.
After collecting the images, I explored three different directions for how the photography and typography could work together throughout the zine. Each direction used the same collection but approached the relationship between image, type, and the circular form differently.
1. The first direction focused on the physical shape of the circle. This approach was the most playful and experimental.
2. The second direction explored a stronger relationship between typography and photography. Images were more contained and framed, while the text moved more dynamically across the page.
3. The third direction treated the photographs as the main element of each composition. Rather than relying heavily on graphic treatments, I experimented with scale and placement to emphasize the circular forms already present in the images. I chose this direction because it allowed the collection to remain the focus while still giving me enough flexibility to design.
I used Lexend and Montserrat because their geometric forms complemented the circular visual language of the photography. The layouts remained image-led, while cropping, scale, and cutouts introduced movement and variation across the spreads.
Aiya Zhumagaliyeva© 2026