Thesis Abstract
The Future of Living assesses our past and reimagines possible future environments. I will explore land, water and space and what it will look like living in these conditions. The topics I will focus on consumption, infrastructure, leisure time and physical and mental health. The inspiration for this project comes from our current climate challenges and the aspirations of public figures such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who are actively finding ways to live in space.
The applications I will develop will include a digital survey, illustrated posters representing each environment, and a website containing the results of the survey displayed at the senior show. These pieces will be informed by a digital survey that will take each environment and ask questions specific to it. The data gathered will be interpreted through the mediums listed above to help the viewer better understand possibilities for change.
Research
I started my research by focusing on what life would look like in 2050 and applying it the the environments I chose. I picked four main topics consumption, infrastructure, time use and physical and mental health. From there I formulated sub topics based on the four main topics such as housing supply and labor market.
Process
Putting the questions all together allowed me to determine what was important.
Survey
Formulating The Survey
Choosing a survey as a way of recording data was an important application for my thesis. Receiving answers from other people and asking how they felt about the subject was insightful. Their voices and ideas set the tone of my project and I relied solely on what they thought each environment would look like.
Sending Out The Survey
I had a couple ways of getting the survey out, but social media was the most successful way of getting more respondents. I first shared it through my Moore's Graphic Design club and from there it was shared on the main page. After getting traction from Instagram, I shared a flyer to the digital newsletter that goes out weekly. I also used Discord and Slack as another method of sharing the survey. Besides sending it out digitally, I talked to students at my school and verbally shared the survey.
Identity
I often gravitate to minimalistic design when I start a project. Since I was going to be creating an illustration (something that isn't my strong suit) I wanted to make the identity simplistic. The shapes and colors represents the different environments.
Posters
Categorizing The Topics
Figuring out how to illustrate the data was tough. Narrowing down the details of what I wanted to illustrate took some thought and I planned to make it as easy as I could on myself. I decided to create categories for the topics. This system would allow me to focus on creating individual identities of the environments and have them follow the same structure