Material agency and multisensory editorial design: beyond the screen

This article argues how sensory design—understood as that which activates multiple senses and establishes emotional and personal relations between object and subject— could generate a more profound and long-lasting experience than the mere adaptation of content to digital or print formats. Building on the conceptualization of the act of reading and the possibilities of post-digital printing, we propose that multisensory design activates a shared agency involving both the object and the user, presenting the book-object as a device that transcends the online/offline dichotomy. Through participatory workshops and qualitative analysis, we observed that emotional implication and perception of the object's agency are higher when the design considers the whole sensory experience, beyond the reading channel. This article concludes that a paradigm shift in editorial publishing lies not in the format, but in the focus of the design. Multisensory design can transform the object-subject relation more radically than the move from print to digital.