who, what, where, when, why, how

The brief for this project asked me to create a series of three posters that reflected upon my two week study abroad trip in Holland and Belgium. This 14 day trip was full of studio, museum, and university visits. My reflection specifically focused on who, what, where, when, why, and how. The posters were printed on A3 size paper using a Risograph machine.

For the first poster, I was asked to observe the different people, outcomes, spaces, motivations and methods seen throughout the trip and interpret them visually and linguistically. I was to address each category (who, what, why, where and when) for each experience and use language and image to describe them.

In order to answer each of the six questions (who, what, where, when, why, and how) for each of the days, I created a grid: 6 columns to address each question and 14 rows to address each day of the trip. Each day, I included six images from every visit, one in each column. If there there were multiple visits in a day, there is more than one image per column in that row. I lowered the opacity for all images, so you could see the all of the images together. In doing this, it created a bit of chaos or blur for the days that had more visits, which reflected the feeling of the day.

For the second poster, I was asked to design my own designer using design. Specifically, I was asked to look back on all I had observed during the trip, and to think about what a future design practice could look like. For this poster I thought about who the designer would design with, what they would design, where they would design, why they would design, when they would design, and how they would design.

The designer I wanted to represent was a book designer who worked digitally to create an interactive book in which the reader helped to determine the outcome. In order to represent this in a 2D space, I used the columns of my grid to create "book spines" that addressed each question (who, what, where, when, why, and how). I paired each question with a slice from images I had taken throughout the trip. The connection between the image and the question is unclear, which represents the interactivity portion of my designer. The viewer is forced to interact with the image and use their own bias to interpret the meaning.

For the third poster, I was asked to create a project proposal for the designer I created in the second poster. I was to specify a project that the designer might take on, using language and visuals to describe the project.

In creating the third poster, I thought about key phrases that are usually addressed in a design proposal: goal, expression, what’s the message, audience, content, and parameters. Our last studio visit of the trip was to Hansje van Halem's studio in Amsterdam. She creates beautiful patterns using typography. I was inspired by her designs, so I decided to use the words associated with a design proposal and turn them into "characters" of a story. I used the letters of each word or phrase and flipped them around, rearranging them to create the “characters” (most of which resemble people or animals). I then used the "characters" to create a pattern.