Status Anxiety

For The Happiness Blueprint, a group publication based on the works of Alain de Botton, the challenge was to create a cohesive editorial piece that balanced multiple authors and visual styles into one unified book. Each designer was tasked with developing a unique visual response to their chosen text while maintaining group-wide design standards such as page size, margins, grid systems, and a consistent blue colour palette. My assigned chapter, Status Anxiety, explored humanity’s obsession with social validation and self-worth. The challenge lay in visually interpreting anxiety and ego within a refined, minimalist layout that could harmonise with the rest of the publication.

The goal was to translate the philosophical themes of Status Anxiety—love, ego, and materialism—into a visual narrative that communicated emotion through type, form, and image. The design needed to evoke a sense of unease and introspection while adhering to the group’s editorial structure. It was important to strike a balance between readability and expression, ensuring that the visuals supported rather than overpowered the text, while still contributing to the book’s overall conceptual cohesion.

Through a series of typographic experiments and graphic explorations, the final design used grain textures, radial blur, and abstract shapes in shades of blue to visualise the instability of self-image. Symbolic imagery—such as a leaking balloon to represent ego and a conqueror to signify material pursuit—was integrated across spreads to enhance the narrative. Serif titles, justified text, and deliberate white space created calm amidst visual tension, forming a balanced yet expressive editorial composition that embodied both anxiety and elegance.