How is labor made visible—or rendered opaque? How do intergenerational relationships take shape within diasporic experience? What kinds of work are tracked, categorized, and captured through systems of surveillance?

Sense Make Before Book takes these questions as its point of departure. Produced by design educator Bradley Sinanan, the publication brings together writing, documentation images, an interview with his father, an archive of accumulated tasks, and the script of his performance With, Holding. Process, record-keeping, and personal history are treated as primary material rather than background context.

Across these materials, this work reflects on labor, inheritance, and visibility, and on the pressures placed on bodies and gestures through documentation. The cover—made from handmade sugarcane paper incorporating medical and tax documents from Sinanan’s family—extends these concerns materially, tracing a lineage of Indo-Caribbean labor from indentured work in Trinidad and Tobago to the formation of a family home in South Florida after immigration in the 1990s.

Designed and published by Bradley Sinanan
Printed in a limited edition of 25 copies

A thesis submitted to fulfill requirements for the Graphic Design MFA at VCUArts, 2025

Softcover with white coil binding, 152 pages, full color digital, 8.5 × 11 inches