Saudade is a book that explores the untranslatable Portuguese term through a variety of written content and visual typography. Though there is no direct translation in English, saudade can be described as a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia for something or someone you love that has been lost. I chose to focus more on the melancholy and longing, basically the grief, of losing something you love. The book features my grandmother’s recipes as well as several songs and poems that center around this kind of grief mixed with nostalgia. In order to visually express this sorrowful yet wistful emotion, I altered the text using a variety of techniques surrounding tearing or blurring. Often when you lose something it can feel like it was ripped away from you, so parts of the books are physically torn, showing the empty space where what is now gone once was as well as the damaged edges left behind. Some of the torn areas are stitched back together, expressing the desperate attempt to cling to what you’ve lost but also showing a sense of healing. Having text be blurred or smudged in some way represents a softer way a loss can fade away. There is nothing solid to hold onto and you are left trying to grasp at the pieces that are slipping away. The majority of the alterations to the text in this book were done physically, then digitally edited and compiled. Paint, whiteout, glue, water, and acetone were some of the material used to alter the text. The entire book is kept in white and a dark, desaturated blue in order to represent the mourning of the loss.