The Diary of a Mad Black Woman is an original 158-page collection of tragic and reflective poetry conceived and executed as a senior college capstone project. The manuscript explores personal lived experiences, emotional depth, and the societal trope of the "always angry Black woman"—dismantling the myth by offering an intimate, unvarnished look into grief, vulnerability, identity, and endurance.
The primary design challenge was to construct a physical book environment where the spatial layout mirrors the emotional cadence of the poetry, allowing the raw weight of the text to resonate on every page.
Format & Margins: Set at a classic 6" × 9" trade trim size with custom optical margins calibrated to frame short-line stanzas in the visual center of the page without feeling sparse, while preventing longer lines from crowding the gutter or face margins.
Typographic Hierarchy: Selected an elegant, highly readable serif font for the body text to maintain exceptional legibility across dense, emotional passages, paired with expressive title typography to establish section transitions.
Negative Space & Emotional Pacing: Carefully mapped page transitions and stanza breaks to control reader pacing. Tragic, high-impact poems were granted generous white space to allow the emotional weight to sit with the reader before turning the page.
Master Page Hierarchy: Built an unobtrusive running header and folio system in Adobe InDesign that guides navigation without competing with the silence required for poetry.
This project represents a complete, end-to-end publishing achievement—from drafting an original 158-page manuscript to executing full interior page architecture, style sheets, and print-ready prep. It proves complete mastery over long-form book assembly, poetic pacing, InDesign master templates, and narrative-driven publication design.