Project Abstract
Have you ever felt the otherworldly atmosphere of being awake before 5am when everything is quiet and the world is asleep? There’s a word for that feeling; Aubadoir. Through an interactive poster series, my thesis project will visualize a series of obscure words that describe emotions, each poster representing a different word. The purpose of this project is to showcase the unspoken connection all humans have through specific feelings despite the reasoning being tied to an individual's experience. This project is about the collective togetherness strangers can experience when confronted with experiencing the same emotion at the same time. The posters will mostly be interactive as a way to engage the audience and further immerse them into the purpose of the design. I have placed no restraints on my methodology for each word as I want the end product to render the emotion as clearly as possible. The words I have chosen are obscure and they have been selected for the power of the emotion they describe. The work is a love letter to the beauty of the indescribable. The posters capture an indescribable feeling- one that until now was believed to be inarticulable and then confronts the viewer with a single word that has defined the exact emotion portrayed by the poster. This series highlights the power of language to capture a human experience and design’s power to visualize them.
Inspiration
I've always been interested in poetry and language. I came across a word that stuck with me forever because of its definitions complexity boiled down into a single word. Sonder: the sudden realization that everyone around you has their own complex lives. Sonder has been my favorite word ever since I found it. I wanted to bring these obscure pieces of language to other people in a way that would engage with design.
The works that I have been inspired by have been about the connectivity of strangers. The work of Frank Warren specifically interested me in the togetherness of strangers. Frank Warren has a book series entitled “PostSecret” that began in 2005. He set up a P.O box where people sent in postcards with their secrets on them. The amount of responses were so overwhelming that he has released 6 books to date. The postcards often have collage style art, drawings, mementos and more personal touches. The project soon had a community of followers as people felt connected to all the strangers all over the world that were vulnerable enough to share their secrets. The connection between strangers through such personal anecdotes inspired me to find more avenues of connection. The goal of the work is to have a viewer understand the emotion behind each poster before reading the card but on a larger scale it’s to make the audience understand that these words exist because so many people experience them. They are not alone and the person standing next to them, viewing the same poster, is feeling the same way.
Piece 1: Etterath
Etterath: the feeling of emptiness after a long and arduous process is finally complete—having finished school, recovered from surgery, or gone home at the end of your wedding—which leaves you relieved that it’s over but missing the stress that organized your life into a mission.
I decided to take the idea of finishing school as my main inspiration for the design as I knew all my fellow seniors would know the feeling well. I went through the planner I use for my assignments and compiled all the things I had written into a large text block. After consulting with other students, I decided to change the format into a checklist style to better convey the completion of these items. I also got rid of some of the more personal anecdotes like people's birthdays as they weren't relatable to other students.
I wanted the suffocation of all the to do items to contrast with the another page the viewer would pull out to reveal the words: What Now? The negative space of the What Now page would give the feeling of a negative kind of emptiness as opposed to a positive nothingness.
I also wanted to add in hand done marks like red checks and a giant DONE stamp carved by hand. The hand made marks solidify the idea that all these to do list assignments were done by all a real person which took time and energy.
I wanted to create more of a claustrophobic feeling on the checklist part of the poster so I decided to cut away words and phrases and print multiple checklists to layer underneath. Each item would still be readable it wold just have the added shadows from the layers of pages. I had to make sure to cut away the same letters on each page to reveal what now when the last page is pulled out. Then I just visually cut away what looked good compositionally occasionally layering the posters to see how they would look when all placed together.
Piece 2: Nikhedonia
Nikhedonia: the feeling of excitement or elation that comes from anticipating success.
I ended up creating this poster digitally but I still wanted a glittery experience so I added a holographic pink tinted glitter to the physical print. However when I presented it to my focus group of peers I did not get the exact reaction I aimed for. Many said the poster reminded them of the childlike wonder of playing because of the image style so I decided to start over and create the piece with a new style.
This time I focused on highlight the excitement in the idea of wining and created a Vegas mood board. The idea of gambling in Vegas has connotations of winning big and the frenzy of excitement that comes with that. I wanted to put that association into my poster.
As I continued worked I checked in with my group intermittently to get their ideas behind the pieces. I was staying consistent in a pink color scheme because the cards I had photographed were pink but I quickly realized the Vegas color scheme of blues and reds was important to the association I wanted to create so I had to photoshop the color of the cards I had photographed.
I still wanted a physical element in the poster to make the glittery sparkly feeling come to life so I kept experimenting with glitter.
The affect of glitter on paper still wasn't producing a bright enough shine so I decided to amp up the effect and purchase small lights to really sell the Vegas concept.
After knowing the lights concept was working how I wanted I continued designing to enhance the light element.
Once I had the circles cut out I mounted the print on chipboard with a space in the center for the light wires to go. I pasted the string lights to the back and then mounted the whole thing on a thick foam board frame so the wires themselves wouldn't get passed directly to the black framing board.
Piece 3: Kairosclerosis
Kairosclerosis: n. the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling
I began by sketching out initial ideas and asking my classmates their reactions to initial ideas. The one that got responses similar to the definition of Kairosclerosis involved a jar of "happy moments". The idea of putting sacred things in a jar to keep them around seemed to be a widely understood concept so I kept working off of that idea.
I then began sketching in the style I wanted. I felt that the crayon hand drawn texture was important because it helped convert the childlike quality I was going for. This was important to the concept because there are associations between children and carefree happiness. I wanted this subconscious implication to plant the idea of happy memories in the viewers mind.
I then transferred my sketches to the scanner where I turned them into .tif files so I could easily change the colors of the drawings digitally. This was important because I still hadn't settled on a color scheme and I didn't want to redraw every aspect of the drawing each time I wanted to change a color. The .tifs also kept the texture of the drawings so it's easy to tell they are hand done.
I decided on a yellow color for the jar and a blue and pink scheme for the hands and people. I wanted the people inside to match the hands around the jar to show that the person holding the jar is also the one in the memory. I also contrasted the happy yellow color of the memory with the sadder blue color of the hands to show that the moment no longer exists outside of the jar.
Piece 4: Adrontis
Adronitis: n. frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone
When I began creating my piece for this word, my initial thought was to create a book that resembled a diary. Each page would be a new day and n each day would be a new fact about a particular person. As the book goes on the writing gets more frustrated as scribbles and drawings end up filling the pages. I wanted the repetitive act of flipping through this long book to become frustrating for the viewer - to mimic the frustration in the words definition. I chose my girlfriend as the person the book would be about as it would be easy for me to come up with a long list of facts about her. I created a list of everything I wanted to be in the book and scanned my handwriting to keep the diary aesthetic consistent.
When I presented the mockup to my focus group of designers they took a lot of deliberating and debating to reach the definition I was trying to portray. Although most people ended up understanding the word I wanted to make it more apparent so I switched tactics. Instead of a book I really wanted to emphasis the passing of time as that was the part many were missing in their initial reactions. I decided to create an accordion fold wall calendar that would fall all the way down to the floor. By creating a calendar it would be apparent how little is learned on each day and how long it takes to reach a point of truly knowing someone.
This was the initial design for my calendar. I had a serif font and red type but as I was working I realized it looked dated and like the calendar had been created for the purpose of this project which is not what I wanted. I wanted the calendar to feel like a notebook that was bought and kept as a journal that just so happened to dive into this kind of mark making. I decided to modernize the design of the months and days.
Piece 5: Funkenzwangsvorstellung
Funkenzwangsvorstellung: n. the primal trance of watching a campfire in the dark
This word gave me some trouble throughout my process. I came up with multiple ideas but none of them resonated with the trance state I wanted to induce.
I was drawn to the clean slightly hypnotic effect of the composition on the right so I decide to continue working with that idea and came up with a poster I considered to be effective.
I thought this poster was defective in the displaying the trance like state of looking into. fire but when I asked a group of peers to tell me their thoughts (without telling them the definition of the word) I didn't receive the responses I wanted. Some felt more of a burning and a self destructive feeling than a hypnotic one. So I had to revisit and come up with a way to push the trance effect I was going for.
I changed the swirl background to more classic trance like imagery and then when I took the poster into a group I received the responses I was trying to evoke!
Piece 6: Vellichor
Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.
In order to convey the feeling of used bookshops I felt like I needed actual books with weathered pages and notes in them however I didn't want to just buy used books and display them. I felt like that simply looking at the books on a wall would not give the same effect as wandering the aisles of a bookstore. After speaking with peers about what they take away from used bookstore experiences I realized that the act of taking a book off the shelf was important. I decided that this piece was not going to be flat on the wall but instead it was going to be a miniaturized version of a bookshelf.
I looked into wooden shadow boxes with shelves and found one that looked aged. I also decided against purchasing books and cutting them down into a small version because Iw anted the covers to be legible and recognizable. I decide to make miniature versions of classic books that often end up in bookstores and age the pages of them myself.
I measured the depth of the shelves they would be displayed on to make sure the books would fit and then printed out the first 2 or so chapters on the plotter at the correct size. I cut out my tiny pages and bound them together then created the covers from chipboard to give them the sturdiness of a real book cover. My tiny books were only about 2 inches tall at most. Making them miniature but a fun enchanting aurora into the piece which parallels the enchantment of a used bookstore.
Piece 7: Cacoethes
Cacoethes n. the strong urge to do something inadvisable
When I first began thinking about this word my immediate thought was about cutting one's hair impulsively or running with scissors. As I began to dive into the concept of cutting things up I found myself thinking about destroying the design itself for the sake of the definition. As I expanded on the act of destroying artwork I thought about the museum space and the urge to touch art that hangs on the wall. I wanted to give my audience the chance to act on their inadvisable thoughts especially considering my thesis was going to be hung in a gallery space along with others work that should NOT be touched or destroyed. I wanted the piece to go from start to finish- having the inadvisable thought of scribbling on famous art, debating It, then actually doing it.
As I continued working with this idea I realized the piece that people were destroying had to be immediately recognized as something precious. Originality, scarcity, market value and social value were all things I considered when choosing the piece to destroy. I decided on the Mona Lisa because it's so widely renown and known. I felt that the better people recognized the piece as precious art the more they would be unwilling to destroy it. I wanted to harness that unwillingness and use it to push the "inadvisable" part of Cacoethes.
I began the process of destroying the work to prompt other people to do the same as the first mark is always the hardest I didn't want to put that responsibility on anyone but myself.
Piece 8: Ruinenlust
Feeling irresistibly drawn to crumbling buildings and abandoned places.
To begin working on this piece I first captured photos of an abandoned building I came across in Milford Pennsylvania. I took as many photos as possible because I wasn't sure what angles I would end up using. I took my images into Lightroom and edited the colors and lighting and then Photoshop to clear the background for the poster I had in mind.
I began coming up with ideas and created a rough digital sketch of what I was thinking. When I showed this poster to my focus group it got positive feedback but
As I listened to my peers talk about exploring abandoned house I realized the main attraction was the thought of what is I inside. They were drawn to knowing what the inside of the house looked like more than anything else. I wanted to use this curiosity to my advantage so that the feeling behind Ruinenlust would be more apparent. I decided to focus mainly on the house itself as the photos I had taken were compelling enough without being manipulated.
I created a wire frame for the curtain and aged the fabric by painting on it with a mixture of colors. I also cut into it to add scrapes and holes with an exacto knife. I wanted the physical curtain to mimic the curtain that's underneath.
Piece 9: Sonder
The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own
For this word I wanted to create a collage of people going about their lives. Some of the people would be cut out and open up to reveal text in their handwriting talking about personal anecdotes and accounts. I wanted the images to feel unposed- simply strangers passing through.
I do portrait photography in my free time so I already had some useable photos and I had some images I had taken in Philly with random strangers so I cut them out and put them in this collage as well. I liked that there were people included who were even strangers to me. I then set up a photo studio and photographed students. I asked them to act as if they weren't getting their picture taken which turned out to be harder than it seems. I coached a lot of the students - asking them to play with their hair, look this way, walk over here etc.
This process of making this idea come to life took a lot of trial and error. Since there is no double sided printing that aligns correctly I had to create it by hand by making the words on each side match up correctly. This alone took a long time and then I had to paste the words to the back of the person cut out and cut the excess paper off. It was a tedious and long process but in the end it payed off.