CREATIVE HOTHAUS COVENTRY

THE CHALLENGE:

The brief asked to experiment with design visual language in response to the Modernist built landscape of Coventry and to synthesize contextual and visual research, current cultural debates and future graphic trends into practical experimentation to generate deliver self-directed outputs demonstrating innovative design solutions that could be further exhibited.

KEY CONSIDERATIONS:

Design vocabulary
Currency / trends in GD contemporary design
Benchmarks for success – Context and value as a graphic design artefact or idea.
Autonomous design – designers developing ideas from content and proposing outputs as products.

CONSTRAINTS/ GUIDELINES:

The locations used were the Modernist Coventry Cathedral and The Coventry War Memorial Park. The design constraint was to conduct all experiments in Black and White only. The base

components were line, shape, form, pattern and texture derived from Coventry City Architecture.

EXPERIMENTS

COMPOSITIONAL NARRATIVE EXPERIMENTS

Experiments with constructing a visual narrative using different constraints. Constraints used are 15 frames and palindrome. A looping line was constructed to end where it started (palindrome) using 15 images of modernist architecture taken in Coventry earlier that day. The composition was then turned into mini animations that were projected back onto interesting surfaces in the same buildings of which the pictures were used, creating a metaphorical palindrome through time.

postcard

experiments

LAYERING AND tactile COLLAGES

Experiments with traditional media like paper, cardstock and methods like cutting, folding, layering, pasting etc.

Using line, shape, texture, pattern from Coventry's modernist architecture

DESIGN OUTCOME

THE BIG IDEA

AIMS

The final outcome uses modernist visual language of the city of Coventry to create a physically interactive graphic book that acts as a halfway point between the designer and audience. The audience is free to play with the pages of the book and manipulate pages as per their wishes.

Modernist architecture is criticised for the aesthetic homogeneity of its formal qualities, which create an audience blind-spot for aesthetic and emotional connections. This aim of the book is to break through the overfamiliarity the audience possesses with practical and functional nature of modernist architecture and to renew audience appreciation by adding an emotional and imaginative aspect to modern visual design. The primary reason for choosing physical material like paper, acetate, cardstock etc. over digital material was to enhance the role of sensory stimulation in developing socio-emotional behaviours, thus bringing emotion to practicality.

future

thinking

artefact

The design output of the tactile immersive book mirrors the nature of architectural procedures.

Architecture is a 3D space that originates from 2D sketches, and is then experienced in 4D by humans over the additive elements of space and time.

The design artefact mimics these procedures by originating in 2D on paper, being made 3D by interaction and by producing a different outcome over space and time with every new addition of a human variant, resulting in a 4D experience.