My work transforms auditory features of heavy metal through research that interprets those features as graphic design methodologies. My quest to research those sound components perhaps introduces existent fundamentals of design, but offers new ways to look at those fundamentals in a series of prompts that alter the melodies of heavy metal and bend them to become principles that propel and inform design. These kintetic posters were a part of my early experiments with motion, particularly kinetic typography and how it reacts to music. I experimented with different programs and platforms and combined multiple methods to create each one.

riima.design/

Loosely operating within the framework of still life and trompe l’oeil, my paintings explore the culture, aesthetics, and spaces to which I have a close proximity. Adjacent mark making techniques and shifting languages of paint, ranging from graphic flatness to sensual painterly naturalism, recall various histories of the medium. Visual tropes from signage, design, and illustration point to systems of public messaging, advertising, and presentation. At times the painterly descriptions of various materials and objects uncannily emulate their respective physical qualities and challenge assumptions of illusion and depiction while yielding images that teeter between the mimetic and the strange. The tone across my work ranges from satirical and self-deprecating to somber and sincere, reflecting my conflicting feelings and complicity with the structures and environments on which I shine a light.

My paintings are plastic spaces for soft collisions of objects, identity, decoration, the wearable, the malleable, screen space, and imagined and real space. I use canvas, air-dry clay, wax, caulk, spackle, paint, paper, collage, found objects and images, felt, stickers, and a variety of acrylic mediums and glues. I cultivate my practice through material exploration that investigates a place between representation and material-as-material. My use of specific symbols and icons speaks to a habitual party, in which ritual and perpetually-evolving personhood plays out in intimate ways. Stickers, candles, and cakes hint at the joy found in a queerness that has not fully arrived. As an artist I am interested in the private self and the public self, and how the divisions between the two break down through dedication to play and material exploration in the space of a painting.

www.bridgetmbailey.com

I focused my design thesis on the methodology of flawed human design. I wanted to double down on this notion that flaws and errors and human drawbacks in design can be perceived in a more positive light as long as we choose to accept them as positive. One way I expressed this was experimenting with my household scanner; a generally analog process that incurs its own drawbacks and flaws. I heavily pushed the idea of injecting myself into my work, literally; my hands can be seen multiple times, including in this image. I wanted to shatter this invisible design rule book, this notion of the crystal goblet and the belief that the best design is unseen, as well as the best designers. I wanted to push the ideas of ownership and individuality in the face of automation, streamlining, and the oversimplification of corporate design.

jennarose.design

As a graphic designer, I like exploring different moods and emotions in different atmospheres. For this specific project, we are given the options to choose from a verse of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, and visualize what the poem is about. Since the poem is extremely profound, as a non-native English speaker, I couldn’t get a single clue what the poem is about. Therefore, I stripped the original meanings by the author and gave it my own narrative to explore the concept of dystopia by creating a fake VR experience. The story in my own narrative is about a person wandering and exploring inside the darkness of a box while accidentally discovering another box within a box.

dywyb.cargo.site

Grief is universal, but experienced personally. This project explores the range of emotions surrounding grief through a visual system. I designed the symbol set for the emotions related to grief and, because what you really want is relief, each opposing emotion. I laser cut the symbols onto a set of pine wood blocks for my mom to help her with my dad’s death.

The blocks can be viewed as objects d’art; with the symbols on the front and back. Across the top is a stanza from The Quitter, a poem my dad used to recite to encourage and inspire us. Inscribed on the bottom are copy drawings of my dad’s handwriting taken from letters he wrote with a phrase he would have said to my mom in each situation if he were still alive today. My mom can read the phrase and hear his voice in her head by seeing his handwriting, helping her through that difficult moment.

explaininwritingevokethroughdesign.cargo.site

Wonderwoods is an alphabet system best suited for titles and headlines. Its organic and quirky personality is inspired from nature and its wilderness environment. Nature for me communicates emotions and messages. As a designer, I can use it and form an expression. This expressive alphabet system was created based on this notion.  I went to Hall’s Pond Sanctuary and started collecting different leaves and twigs. By playing with the forms, shapes and grids, I created an alphabet system that consists of twenty-six letters (A–Z), numerals (0–9), and basic punctuation (.,?!:;‘’“”). Using the Wonderwoods font, I designed 3 posters (18 x 24 in.) on Mnemonic bird songs. These motion posters explore sounds that occur when birds are present in the wilderness environment. They help to identify birds by their songs. I used the three common birds spotted in Boston: Goldfish, Tufted Titmouse and Northern Cardinal.

mahnoorb.com

Found in Translation brings together inclusive design, which is centered around communication, and my interest in health and wellness, where the metaphor of “finding” is frequently used. Finding breath, finding clarity, finding balance, finding specific muscle groups during exercise, and so on. In the wellness world, the process of finding is never fully completed, it’s more about the journey.

This work is a typographic collection of phrases and sectors of wellness that are potentially not inclusive of users of across the spectrum of ability, age, culture, and socioeconomic status. The color palette was influenced by the American Printing House for the Blind's color recommendations.

chrissycasavantdesign.cargo.site

My practice revolves around collection, revisitation, and interiority. Drawing from personal objects and family photographs, I create images that question the way I organize my small treasures. What stays and what goes? What do I keep coming back to? The paintings act as containers, as well as the contained object, sometimes getting interpreted again within other works.

The work’s subject matter addresses ideas of nesting: the child within the womb, the picture within the album, the object held by the shelf. In creating compositions, I use the flatbed space of the scanner to arrange and contemplate connections between various objects. They become flattened, physically and perhaps metaphorically, and then are created anew by my hand in the painted space.

What happens when those objects get squashed and reproduced, and then reinterpreted? I find the process similar to being told a story of a time when you did not yet exist, or maybe partially existed. I saw (heard) Tina Turner live from the womb. When the image is stored, sun damaged, scanned, cut up, painted, and repainted, it becomes thick with memory, paralleling the way stories are passed down and altered through generations. Fraught yet tender, my practice creates space to hold my personal identities as a daughter, a collector, and a painter.

Today, we have to use the Internet to handle bunch of things every day, and the Internet continues to fill our lives. Should we reflect on the relationship between self-positioning and a rapidly developing society? I think we need to take a break and leave some room for reflection.

In this project, I designed a board game. Since the topic of my thesis is a more critical topic, but I don’t want to bring negative feelings to the readers, so for the design part, I want to design something interesting, I hope people will gradually understand my concept during the game. Of course, it doesn’t matter if you didn’t get the concept. This is still a game that can exist independently.

yikechen.club

In his essay, The Horror of Mimesis, David Young Kim explores how the Renaissance practice of dissecting corpses helped conceive of a realistic, representational or “mimetic” style of painting—the style associated with European painting since 1500. Kim discusses a painting called The Head of Medusa by an unknown Flemish artist. Depicting a severed head, the work reflects both a thorough knowledge of human anatomy and also the horror of the dissection which made this knowledge possible. Beginning in the 1500s, Europeans began dissecting other bodies, not just dead ones—through imperialism and colonization. The complete surrender to dissection made Europeans a bit like the severed head in The Head of Medusa, a deadly weapon, separated from its body. My purpose in this work is not to reject dissection outright, but to call attention to this “head-over-heart” approach to existing in the world separate from other human beings—and separate from the body that makes up all of us and that we all share here on Earth.

My paintings present a simple defined structure, such as geometric shapes, that coexist with a large number of smaller irregular marks within a tactile and evanescent surface space. They emerge in unexpected ways with new starting points, whether based on experiments with a new idea, material or process and develop in an intuitive and rhythmical way. It often feels as though they are painting themselves through me.

My work is inspired by the refined visual dynamics of Minimalism and by the patterns and symbols found in creations from indigenous cultures that are an integral part of the celebration and well-being of their community. They are evidence that, throughout human history, painting has proved itself to be a basic human need. Relating this truth to the needs of contemporary society, I hope that my paintings can also contribute to people’s well-being, allowing them an opportunity to reflect and refresh their senses. 

www.sarahelliottstudio.com

Beginning with ridding myself of preconceived notions, the Eye Guys were formed without concern. Past works leading up to this project have been experimental and abstract, and celebrated “breaking the tools.” This project is a conceptual expansion of fictional characters. This includes a robust backstory and a fictitious language. The characters’ world is based on existing structures that we see in society. Although entirely fictional, the Eye Guys are here to tell a story with conviction. This project does not just promote play but also aims to educate.

Form and concept work together tunefully to create a conceivable entity. What is cute? What is scary? Can cute be scary? This project falls somewhere between the lines of these dueling themes. Through research, a scientific approach of quantifying these themes was conducted.

arivot.cargo.site/Mutation-Mystery

As a designer I see myself having three important jobs: to create, solve problems, and to explore the many realms of design across disciplines. Back when technology was in its most basic and brand new, it was not very accessible, always clunky, and only specialists could handle it. Over the years technology has been evolved and has permeated almost every aspect of our lives; creating many cross-disciplinary moments and opportunities. This diffusion has and will become the future for design jobs and designers. The designer’s role will be to act as the “fusion” between art, design, and many other areas. The ability to think critically while working seamlessly across disciplines, blending together each of their best aspect, as well as opening the mind to imagination, is what makes a “Fusionist”. A fusionist is driven by the future, while using design as the vehicle to give the best experience. This piece explores the fusion between biology and design and how the intersection between them can be used to rethink society and creation. A personal takeon Klari Reis's work on how bacterial forms can translate to illustration.

karieverson.com

Through interrogating the space between painting and photography, I have become interested in the interplay between complicating the viewer’s perception and convincing them to trust the supposed reality of my paintings. My work calls into question the objectivity of the photographic image in relation to the subjectivity of painting. It is our shifting definitions of truth in these mediums that compels me to reveal the falsehoods around them.

My paintings impose the need for slow looking on the part of the viewer as I obscure the distinguishability between different processes and effects. The combination of printmaking techniques with oil paint entered my work as a way to mediate my control. Allowing chance to participate in the work introduces objectivity into an otherwise controlled medium. These paintings mark my very existence; the factuality of the work manifests through my presence in time. Therefore, the paintings are revealed as true through their own objecthood.

www.daniellefretwell.com

My work focuses on the connections between designer and audience in terms of emotional community. Graphic design, in my practice and definition, can be the creation of opportunity for mutual experiences and dialogue to exist. I’m interested in my relation to this outlook on design as an emotional connector and community builder through the lens of graphic design history and our current era of hyper specialization, accessibility, and branding. I engage in the visual dialogue humans have shared with each other throughout history, the interpretations that connect us in modern day design, and how that may create a better connection between creator and audience.I recently came across a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments.’ During this year, we’ve all experienced self-isolation and social distancing. We all know what it’s like to miss people we can’t see. Wish You Were Here is a visual response to tthat feeling of longing, especially during life’s simple moments. This set of 13 hand-stamped, white on white postcards contain moments of quiet such as watching fire crackle, looking up through the trees, early mornings on the T, and saying goodbye on the first date. They invite the user to empathize with these moments and visualize themselves experiencing them.

meminemaybeours.cargo.site

My work dances between many dichotomies: atmospheric space and density, motion and waiting, words and forms, past awareness and future threshold. They are rooted in looking and material exploration and often grow into external manifestations of personal and psychological space.

Last year, I began working with generic bleach and dyes, having been drawn to the notion of making a painting that lies within the fibers of my substrate. With these unwieldy chemicals, control becomes scarce, and surprises abound. By laying down color and then removing pigment, I pay attention to the additive and reductive tension that keeps me moving between forms, colors, and feelings, without settling on any one answer too quickly. Cyanotype locates impressions, activates visual time passage, and creates a space for bodily and spiritual experiences of being, aging, and remembering to be explored.

www.georgannagreene.com

In Japan, LGBTQ people still face widespread discrimination and prejudice. Because of this, I wanted to educate people about the LGBTQ movement and advocate for greater tolerance and understanding.

This quiz app was designed to target middle and high school students. Many young people become aware of their sexual preferences during this time in their lives. For this reason, I created the quiz app since it would be useful to have a tool to help them deal with the realization that their sexual preference is not in line with the majority of society’s.

the-rainbow-truth.com/quizapp

taiyo.xyz/english

Shortly after graduation Taiyo Hasegawa tragically passed away. Christopher Sleboda, Associate Professor of Art in Graphic Design said that, “Taiyo was a profoundly talented and thoughtful young designer. He was gentle, kind, and devoted to finding ways to use graphic design to mitigate stereotypes and create platforms for knowledge and education. Taiyo was deeply committed to working against prejudice and discrimination, and to bringing beauty into the world. He loss will be felt by so many.” The BU School of Visual Arts and Graphic Design program send our deepest condolences to his peers, friends, family, and loved ones as we remember Taiyo's warmth and care for others and his work as a gifted designer. 

I use paint to study the ecology of the New England forest. I engage in research practices both onsite and offsite through historical texts and scientific reports which inform a painterly space that questions the intertwined natural and human histories of the Massachusetts landscape. The subject matter of my paintings isolate moments of past ecological events and human interventions that demonstrate the trauma, vulnerability and resilience of the forest. The forest floor, in all it’s entanglements of underbrush and invasive species tells a long story of human movement, colonization, and globalism. Painting makes these histories visible, encouraging one to confront and meditate on the history - and future - of the contemporary landscape.

www.amandakhawkins.com

My interest in incorporating and/or representing these kinds of objects stems from the strange simultaneity of their ubiquity and their “invisibility.”

Most of us learn to understand the world through a ceaseless stream of mediated visual stimuli, from still images in magazines and billboards to moving images such as films and advertisements.  Our contemporary state is one of near-perpetual visual stimulation, and we are increasingly invested in and responsive to all forms of mediation.  But at the same time, we have become less and less aware of the material nature of our surroundings, of the everyday things, the domestic, mundane, “boring” objects that constitute this endlessly running world and support every aspect of our daily lives. They are designed to fulfill our every specific need and exist as brilliant feats of engineering, but are so often taken for granted that they become as if invisible.

My work has always been related to domestic objects. From object-human relationships to object-object relationships, my intention is to explore the ways in which these mundane objects have embedded meaning (either personal significance or broader cultural associations), and to determine how these meanings can change and influence both perspective and projection.

My work always considers creating form from content. A Piano is a playful and light-hearted type animation that recites a poem from Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein in a unique way. Words and letters become alive and move throughout the animation. For the music, I chose In Walked Bud by Kenny Barron. The original version of In Walked Bud is a 1947 jazz composition by Thelonious Monk. I specifically chose jazz music because the rawness of improvisation which defines it resonate the verbal Cubism in Stein’s poem. Also, the poem was written when the jazz music was at its peak. The minimal representation of piano keys become parts of types in various compositions and catch the viewer’s attention from the beginning to the end.

@byori.b

My paintings and sculptural objects explore ideas of language, perception, and certainty through the format of games. Typically simple and leisurely, games offer a specific set of parameters and elements that exist outside of our reality and inside their own particular complex, that is to say, inside their own reality. My practice aims to create artworks that are built out of rules and logic-based systems. These formulas give the works an innate sense of structure that may not be entirely understood by the viewer, but are nonetheless experienced through the repetition, arrangement, and coding of the elements within each artwork. The awareness of structure is further foregrounded by juxtaposing the rigidity of these systems with the spontaneity of the material by making everything by hand or with simple tools, leaving behind the evidence of chance through touch and human error. The materiality manifests the intangible frameworks of my practice into physical form, presenting themselves to the viewer without illusion, but as they are.

www.landonjonesart.com

For this project, we were asked to explore scale, proportions, rhythm, and meaning through designing 2D symbols and implementing them into context find meaningful to share a story.
My story is about rice. Rice, known as typical and historical Asian food reflects our culture in various aspects. It embedded our common memories, stories, customs, and traditions. They are small vignettes easy to forget in our daily life. So I want to tell a cultural story through a rice perspective, and I took stamp as their format to inform these small things are valuable to remember generation by generation. Each stamp have a different subject matter, they are:
In It: The component of rice; By Product: Various products made of rice; History: How people developed rice farming; Twin Sister: Rice and Wheat; Recipe: How to cook rice; Tradition: Some customs eating rice; In the Field: How rice grow; In the Factory: How is rice processed.
First, I design the initial 8 icons in black and white. Then, I developed them into 8 small illustrations.

faithlidesign.com

My oil paintings portray hair freed from the human body and situated in unnamable realities. Hair becomes animated through the use of implied motion, scale, and dramatic lighting. Establishing a feminine presence and dominant mood, large bodies of hair undulate, curl, and cascade, exceeding the viewer in scale.

In my paintings, long locks are cropped by the edge of the canvas and suggest a narrative beyond the frame. This body of work addresses our complex relationship to hair, evoking notions of sexuality, identity, ego, gender, cultural norms, and rituals. Gathering as patterns and coiling inwards, the forms organize together in power, operating within the polarities of serenity and fierceness.

As an artist, I’m interested in painting as a way to negotiate confinement and liberation. It is through observation and imagination that I visualize a reality in which symbolic barriers are overthrown, allowing for a triumph and freedom to flourish.

@kamlnski

Shantel Miller is a Jamaican-Canadian visual artist whose interdisciplinary practice incorporates drawing, painting, printmaking and photo-collage to communicate the intricacies of the human condition. While exploring constructs of race, gender, religion, and sexuality she pulls from personal narrative as a departure point understanding black female subjectivity within public and private moments. Within this mode of inquiry, she contemplates tensions between the sacred and secular and represents the black body as sensual, powerful and reverential. What arises is uncommon imagery sometimes depicted with isolated moments of photorealism, evocative body language and high contrast color relationships. Ranging from small to large in scale, each painting reads allegorically through a language of symbolism that offers ongoing revelation. She pulls from autobiographical themes, using lived and imagined experiences as a departure point for creating visual language to relate to broader social realities in the world.

My work consists of paintings and painterly objects that borrow from the languages of craft and building traditions. Through these works, I mine visual tropes and signifiers of rural America as a way to consider issues of race, masculinity and individualism. My working process allows me to explore these themes and their relation to rural Americana aesthetics and “The American Dream.” Notions of vulnerability and loss run through my work, creating a tension between an artwork’s appearance and the larger issues which I allude to through my subject matter. Materials and processes of labor point to mending, repair, and care-taking. These restorative gestures in the work are at odds with the aesthetics of failure and vulnerability, ultimately complicating notions of repair. I think of these conditions as being parallel to optical tactics in contemporary American politics.

I use doors for their physical characteristics and for their rich metaphorical significance. Doors separate our public lives and our private ones. We use doors to designate power, highlight bureaucratic structures, and emphasize transitions from one place to another. The power that doors wield highlights the elements of the physical and psychological structures that underpin the partitioning of space and the designation of purpose within architecture. Doors symbolize opportunity, privacy, security, or the lack of all three. When one door opens and another closes, change is happening. A threshold is being crossed.

hannahminifie.com

The anxiety flexagon is an attempt to formulate an abstract concept like anxiety.
Since my childhood, having suffered from anxiety and the flexagon is a reflection of what anxiety feels like given by my personal experience. The triggers tend to repeat infinitely, closing up on me from all sides. Formatively of the structure of a flexagon accomplished to mimic that experience as it loops indefinitely, closing up on the center.
The triggers shown here are:
— The unbendable structures laid by any societal construct,
— Responsibilities and how they have a tendency to keep piling up,
— Bad Luck,
— and Imposter Syndrome. The easiest way to explain this would be to feel like a comic sans in a room full of Didots.
The final result is not only a representative of anxiety; it is also a therapeutic tool, a momentary antidote, as it acts as a fidget toy for overwhelming times. It incorporating the user into a personal and vulnerable experience with the goal of becoming more self aware.

To the designer, the study of place can offer many facets of information about space, people, culture, and values. When we design place, or for place, we are designing culture, social interaction, traditions, memories, and physical space. Through the practice of design and study, designers learn from the many lessons that they encounter. Applying the methodology of these lessons may help achieve a more inclusive and “authentic” design practice. Placeholder is a publication that explores the concept of place and its relationship with the field of design through research, writing, interviews, design projects, photography, and book design in a hope of illuminating a methodology of design and defining a practice.

thesis.michaeljeffreyrosenberg.com

I’ve always felt like I’m almost there, with most endeavors in my life. I’m a touch (or more) impulsive, erratic; a professor once described me as “feverish” in my making—and that applies to the rest of my life too. It’s admirable in effort, an unrelenting passion and curiosity. But sometimes it leaves a handful to be desired in execution. Perhaps it has to do with the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that a [very insensitive] therapist warned my dad about when I was in high school. This is my best attempt at putting things together: a collection of my curiosities, experiments, obsessions, and, dare I say, compulsions; my formal, and not-so-formal, design inquiries; and a glimpse of that feverish, frantic, playful, unremitting spark that drives me forward. Driven to show, share, overshare, try, communicate, translate, understand, interact, ingest—digest—unhinge—to constantly disassemble, iterate, and to try again. I invite you to indulge your childish curiosity through the deconstruction, recontextualization, and feverish making of art through the lens of graphic design.

My works are notations of my experiences throughout the day. Moments of insignificance are given an elevated importance through the process of transformation and material tactility. Engaging myself in the mindless, mundane activities brings me into contact with a philosophical experience of existence. The emotions of the mind and the reflexes of the body are objectified to create a flow of events that unfold in the form of abstract storytelling. Through the creation of a timeline that is neither linear nor organic, a moment originates in the present. My inherent need for balance brings out a pleasing comfort in the visual navigation. A movement and oscillation within the dichotomies of the inside and outside, I dwell in a space called in-between. The landscape and architectural elements are symbolic of the vast, dense, open and confined spaces. By the way of encoded markings and recordings of lived memories, I am questioning the perception of reality.

This past year forced a heightened awareness of our surroundings. My painting practice grew out of new sensations and responded to the rest and rehabilitation that grew from a global recalibration. I use a dreamy and sun-soaked oil paint palette, preserving the gesture of the paintbrush as if to freeze a whisper. I am constantly observing my environment, in the pursuit of translating daily observations in a meaningful and compelling way. Recently, my attention has shifted to the natural world. In particular, I’ve been responding to a shrub around the corner from my apartment. In October, I noticed her covered in an early autumn snow. The next day, she was deflated, but still prickly, like a sleeping spider. A lot was in flux, but I now had something stable to observe: this shrub and her journey through the winter. I knew I had to paint her; and not as an object or a plant, but as a relationship, an idea, a feeling, a time.

www.jonisullivan.com

My practice takes shape through the formation, and exploration of my identity. Through paint I render my relationship with the Black body, and through materiality I explore the painting as an object, language, and image. I seek to allow the painting to transcend it’s objecthood, and become a record of the Black bodily, and cultural experience. I define my work through my analysis of, and relationship with, Haitian Vodou, as well as many other traditions of the African-Atlantic. This all comes together to depict what I call “A Black World of Mine”, a place of remembrance, contemplation, and conflict.

www.moshehtucker.com

My artwork typically takes the form of densely-layered monotypes which incorporate translucencies, embossing, collage, mixed-media and running collected organic material through the press. The prints echo the delicacy and ephemerality of the land they reference; a soft, intimate and somewhat cathartic lens to grapple with the more painful and divisive undertones of intertwining land and politics. Sculptural forms, such as resin acorns cast from those collected from Boston, give permanence and preciousness to the soon-to-rot original specimen picked from the ground.

What is the goal of communication? Sharing information? Gaining information? That’s what I believed in the past, but now I think, it's for building relationships through communication.

During my years of studying graphic design I've have been thinking about to communicate with my audience. I don’t know how, or when, the audience will approach my work. That's unpredictable.

Unpredictability often occurs in improvisational art, where most of the performances are unscripted, and created collaboratively by performers and audience at the same time. Improvisation as performance art is deeply grounded in the physical experience. The body and the awareness of its physicality is the basis of developing all material. The process is very open and playful. I want to bring the same experience to my audience as well. In this case, they are not just viewers but players, and create something they didn't know they could create.