Zumbi dos Palmares is the only college targeted to black people in Brazil, a country where 54% of population is formed by Afro-descendants, but only 12% of them are in college.

All population knew is that black people were enslaved people. But with hours and hours of research, a lot about black people history that was left untold started to come up. Years and years of colonization and slavery washed away the fact that they were actually highly qualified, even before they’d become slaves.

This content should be in regular books, taught in school, brought to the public eye. Since it’s not, we’ve developed a book to correct these racial injustices.

To bring this kind of awareness to the students it is to lift their power. To do this is the same as telling: there’s knowledge, intelligence and power in your blood. If your ancestors did it, so can you.

We used the map os Palmares, this huge symbol of resistance to black people in Brazil, to form all images in the book through generative design. We created a code that transforms the map into tiny particles that were put together to insert the DNA of this history in each and every image of this book. This was the way we found to put the essence of the past in stories that are so important that could have never been hidden. We’re looking carefully for the past to build a better future.