VOID 

2015 Design BFA Thesis Exhibition

Design cannot be properly understood in a gallery space because it is void of context. We have chosen to forgo displaying our physical projects in order to call attention to the complexities and nuances of the design process itself. The Thesis Exhibition consisted of typographic walls describing each designer’s cognitive process of the work, while an accompanying catalog illustrates the corresponding project. This division does not provide the ideal context for our work, rather further points to the fallacy and hypocrisy in detaching design from its life in the real world and displaying it in a gallery.

Read the review from our visiting Studio Critic

Catalogue

We deconstructed each project into image and text. The images were found in newsprint catalogue while the text was displayed on the gallery walls. Each of the projects displayed were divided into categories: objects, social, print, branding, mobile applications and multimedia. The catalogues accompanying the gallery space mirrored the black and white walls which delineated the change of one category to the next.

Text

As a member of the “Space” team, we sought to create an experience in which the visitor is expected to interact within the static space of the gallery. We erected two walls within the preexisting gallery space to create a natural flow for the visitor to follow. The text for each project loosely followed a character limit and writing guideline leaving room for the individuality of the designer writing about their displayed piece to come through while keeping a cohesive visual appearance of each paragraph.

We then divided the statements into three levels of intimacy based on how the project is intended to be used. The first level being an individual level, the second being something involving two to three people, while the third level being a design product or system a community would take part in. These levels determined the size of the type installed in the gallery. The different sized statements subtly and subconsciously guided the viewer to move in and step back from the statements depending on the size. Design project intended to be used by an individual had descriptions on the wall at the smallest level, so only one or two gallery goers could comfortably read it at a time. Conversely, design projects intended to be used by a large group or a community were displayed on the wall in the largest text allowing many visitors to gather and read at once.

We used Lineto’s Brown as our typeface, using it’s black-slant to identify key words in each statement. The statements were cut and installed in vinyl by the Space team over the period of a week. The curatorial statement was presented in an interactive installation that revealed the exhibition concept when people were present in the gallery space.