Book Design · Editorial · 2026

Invisibleby Design

A coffee-table book about the algorithmic systems we've stopped seeing — and the people they leave behind.

Invisible by Design — angled cover mockup
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The Project

Invisible by Design documents the making of The Algorithm Mirror — a privacy-first web tool I built that turns a person's YouTube watch history into visual data art. The book turns that tool into an argument: the same systems that quietly narrow your feed also widen the gap between people who understand how those systems work and people who never knew they existed.

Across 28 pages it moves from a personal story — growing up in the Philippines, watching the digital divide split a classroom during the pandemic — to original research on twelve participants and 82,164 videos, and finally to a case for algorithmic literacy as a civil-rights issue.

The design problem was making something invisible feel concrete. Rather than reach for stock metaphors — magnifying glasses, padlocks, glowing eyes — I built the book's entire visual language out of the same material the tool itself produces: particle fields, pixel grids, and network meshes, each one generated from data.

The pilot study, in numbers.

// 12 participants · 2 years of history
82,164 Videos analyzed across
twelve participants
64.7% Viewing in just the
top three categories
31.2% Watched between
10 pm and 2 am
−57% Diversity decline,
User A (18 months)
7 Languages the
tool supports
"Algorithmic literacy shouldn't be a privilege. It should be a right.
— from the book
01

The Compounding Gap

Cover, opening portrait, and the personal story — where the visual system and the argument are introduced together.

Cover
pp.1Cover. The title split by a rising curve — generative network mesh emerging from negative space.
Pixel portrait spread
pp.2Pixel portrait. Each square is one video; each color, a category. Real watch history as abstract art.
Skyscraper and Philippines pixel map spread
pp.8Unstable ground. "You cannot build a skyscraper on unstable ground." The personal origin spread.
Chapter one cityscape opener
pp.10Chapter one opener. A rural-to-urban skyline walking the reader across the divide, an algorithmic dome overhead.
Algorithm signals and filter bubble diagrams
pp.12How it steers you. Three custom line-art infographics: the signal funnel, the filter bubble, and the path to agency.
"The algorithm isn't malicious. It's optimized.
— Chapter One
02

Building the Mirror

The tool itself, the research findings, and the data visualizations that carry the book's evidence.

Chapter two privacy architecture
pp.14Chapter two opener. A line-art diagram of local, on-device processing — a tool that reveals surveillance without doing it.
Research findings data spread
pp.16The data spread. 82,164 videos rendered as a content-concentration ring and a late-night temporal dial.
User A diversity decline pixel grid
pp.18User A. Eighteen months of viewing collapsing from rainbow to a single hue — a feed narrowing in real time.
Perspective corridor of category tiles
pp.20"I feel manipulated." A one-point corridor of colored tiles vanishing to a point — viewing history as a hallway.
Pixel-art participants and particle figure
pp.22Not against AI. Twelve pixel-art participants beside a figure dissolving into colored particles — the human at the center.
We just have to build it.
And share it. And teach it.
— Looking Forward
03

What Comes Next

The call to action and the closing image — the book hands the mirror to the reader.

Four platform feeds spread
pp.24Beyond YouTube. Four recommendation feeds in the book's palette — the same framework applied across platforms.
Closing eye and walking figure spread
pp.26The closing spread. An iris built from data, a lone figure walking into a field of falling color. "The reflection awaits."
Back cover
pp.28Back cover. Full trade-back anatomy — hook headline, jacket copy, endorsement, author bio, and barcode.
Approach

Data as material

Nothing in the book is decorative. Every particle field, pixel grid, and mesh is generated from real or simulated watch-history data, so the visuals are the same kind of object the tool produces — not illustrations of it.

No stock metaphors

The brief deliberately avoids the visual clichés of surveillance design — no padlocks, no all-seeing eyes used as scare imagery, no magnifying glasses. The one eye in the book is a quiet imprint mark, not a threat.

Editorial typography

Space Grotesk sets the display voice, Inter carries long-form reading, and JetBrains Mono labels every data point and caption — a three-way system that keeps research, narrative, and interface legible side by side.

Read it

The full book, page by page.

// 28 pages · best viewed full-screen Open flipbook ↗