One Hundred Instructions for the Future
Publication Design
A speculative project made of four books, each addressed to a different point in time. Book 1 is addressed to 2026, now. Book 2 to 2091, the year the creator is expected to die. Book 3 to 4045, a date that comes from the gap between when the Rosetta Stone was carved and when it was finally decoded, mapped forward from today. Book 4 is addressed to whenever comes after that.

Every book carries the same one hundred instructions. They were written with a specific future in mind, one where copies have replaced originals so many times that the difference no longer exists. In that world, what is genuinely human becomes harder to locate. These instructions are designed to produce answers that cannot be faked or replicated, responses so specific to one person that they work as proof of individual existence.

The instructions change form across the four books. Book 1 is in English. Book 2 uses languages drawn from distinct linguistic families. Book 3 uses open-source archival images. Book 4 uses original illustration. Each book is also half the physical size of the next, a visual representation of the growing difficulty of carrying a message across time, the further it has to travel, the more it has to hold.

Each book is printed underneath at low opacity, giving future readers overlapping layers to work from, the same logic that made the Rosetta Stone readable. The project was sparked by NASA's Voyager Golden Record, humanity's attempt to send itself into the unknown. This project turns that impulse around, sending a message forward in time, and asking whoever finds it to leave proof that they were here too.