Cabinet of Superstitions
CATEGORY
Editorial Design · Publication · Art Direction
ROLE
Concept, research, art direction, editorial design, printing, binding, and assembly
TOOLS
Procreate, DALL-E, Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator
CONTEXT
Individual Student Project - FH Aachen
A familiar kind of magic
Growing up in Brazil, I remember my grandmother keeping small zines about dreams, superstitions, and other strange everyday things. That memory returned during the seminar on Collections & Catalogues and became the starting point for a catalogue about the invisible meanings people attach to ordinary objects.
The project asks what a contemporary cabinet of curiosities might contain—not fossils or relics, but the ordinary rituals people use to negotiate luck, fear, protection, and uncertainty.
CHALLENGE
Approximately fifty objects and beliefs gathered from different cultural contexts risked becoming a flat alphabetical archive with no meaningful reading rhythm.
EDITORIAL DECISION
I organised the collection by the situations in which these beliefs appear—not by country or alphabet. Six thematic chapters then guided the publication’s navigation, image pacing, and changing light and dark spreads.
OUTCOME
A printed catalogue that turns fragmented folklore into a coherent editorial experience through classification, modular layouts, a shared illustration language, and physical craft.
Behind the beliefs
A written interview with ethnologist Dr. Anastasiia Kryvenko added a broader perspective on why object-related beliefs persist: they can offer reassurance, create belonging, and make uncontrollable situations feel temporarily manageable.
A modular system
A modular spread system allowed individual objects to change scale and position while keeping the hierarchy, page furniture, illustration treatment, and chapter pacing consistent.
Selected bibliography
Orlando Loureiro Neves, Dicionário de Superstições, 2005
David Pickering, Cassell’s Dictionary of Superstitions, 1995
Paul Radin, Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, 1949
Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud, A Dictionary of English Folklore, 2000
Stuart Clark, Superstition: A Very Short Introduction, 2012
David Pickering, Cassell’s Dictionary of Superstitions, 1995
Paul Radin, Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, 1949
Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud, A Dictionary of English Folklore, 2000
Stuart Clark, Superstition: A Very Short Introduction, 2012
Image disclosure: All object images combined AI-generated material with manual illustration, correction, and visual standardisation in Procreate and Illustrator before the catalogue was designed in InDesign.
