The Process

Through this project, my concrete goal was to design a poster that creates a dialogue between typography and imagery. My conceptual theme of this poster was ‘typographic dissent’. I needed to use typography and design for a social cause: to challenge; to question; to assert.

My topic: Addictive Dysfunction demonstrates the fine balance between enjoyment/overindulgence and comfort/pain in the face of substance or behavioral abuse.

Exploring Other Options

Rather than simply organizing content, I considered the semiotic and rhetorical power of typography to expand and amplify a message, question or conversation. To this end, I kept in mind that a poster should have numerous levels of hierarchy in order to successfully engage an audience, providing depth and substance as the viewer moves  closer, and as such, has the potential to convey many related or even contradictory narratives concurrently.

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Statement of Concept

We all recognize addiction as a universal issue which defies time and culture. If we could change our perspectives to see addiction as the use of material or superficial substitutes to solve feelings of loneliness and ideological discomfort, we could find more effective solutions. Addiction is a reaction to a kind of cognitive dissonance when our natural mindset contracts societal dogma.

It’s important not to see this dogma as the source of their problem. It’s equally as important not to place blame on the addict and their dysfunction. Our role is to individually identify with the source of an addicts dysfunction. We shouldn’t leave this responsibility on our society to handle these moral dilemmas when they become public issues. We compromise our rightful role in influencing how society views these issues by refusing to participate and understand them on a personal level.

When we are without food, it affects us physically, mentally, and socially. Depending on how long we’ve been without, the changes that occur to our metabolism may need more time calibrate. The solution to hunger, a physical situation, is to eat something that is material.

This material substance can have significance, but at its core, the problem and solution remain material. As complex beings, our internal problems expand beyond our physiological needs. At times, their are emotive dilemma’s which can stem from longing, hope, shame, etc.

The addict usually tries to make up for these complex issues by ingesting or confiding in material objects or substances. This specific poster depicts the psycho/neural reaction to ingesting a drug. On one end, it’s colorful nature and the orbital forms within shows a full range of pleasure being experienced. This however is framed by a dark background which is only occupied by neural connections to represent the strain one inflicts when feeding their own addiction. 

The right of Americans to peaceably assemble is a well-established doctrine in the United States constitution. Through a course called Project Citizen, I was given the opportunity to study how this right was exercised in different regions. A few students from Kent State University and Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles were tasked with documenting our interactions with newsmakers, voters, political leaders and peers of varying political perspectives. The fact that students from Ohio, a Republican voting state, and California, a Democratic voting state, participated was of no coincidence.

Project Citizen

The instructors who facilitated our activities urged us to encounter our cultural assumptions of a place and its peoples head-on. This was largely a journalistic course that spanned roughly six weeks– three weeks in Los Angeles, CA and the following three spent in Kent, OH. Within that span of time, we certainly looked into a lot more than assembly. The aim of our research for the course and this study on visual identities certainly overlapped in some areas, namely the documentation of protests.

Assembly Required

The goal of our video was to examine how American citizens exercise their right to peaceably assemble according to the first amendment, particularly in a time of great social engagement. We plan to attend four rallies (a pro-Trump rally in California, Pride events in both California and Ohio, and finally a pro-choice event in Ohio). At the events, we will interview either organizers or attendees and supporters of the movements to further understand what drove them specifically to take political action, a step beyond simply holding political opinions.

We hope to address many of the stereotypes of the West Coast and Midwest by attending rallies that may be contrast with the political leanings that are generally associated with the regions. We also hope to provide a sense of similarity or connection in the personal convictions that drives one to assemble for a cause they believe in.

This is the story of how Beessential started. From a simple question to a lifelong love of bees. Beessential contracted me to create a full-length commercial that shares the origin of the company. Beessential makes natural skin care products by hand from start to finish, from our bee hives to your home.

We focused on implementing a micro-smart grid based on smarter design inspired by the way that trees communicate and the way that the body stores energy. Our smart grid focuses on two aspects: energy storage for emergencies and sending power more efficiently to where it is needed. Particularly, we favor blockchain and flow battery technology in our smart grid for the way that it reacts to blackouts and emergency situations. Blockchain technology also provides more security for specialized areas of the power grid.

Inspiration

We determined our solution by looking at how nature reacts, responds, stores and distributes energy. We found a connection between the ways trees communicate and blockchain technology. In nature, when a tree is sick other trees will send it nutrients for the sake of protecting the canopy. Blockchain technology works by targeting problem spots in a power grid to isolate and react to power disruptions and fluctuations in a way that is faster and supports the grid better. 

We found a connection between the way that the body stores energy and flow batteries. In some living organisms energy storage is electrochemical and takes the form of gradients of charged ions across cell membranes. Flow batteries use this similarly. A flow battery is a type of electrochemical cell where chemical energy is provided by two chemical components dissolved in liquids contained within the system and separated by a membrane. We chose flow batteries because they dispersed energy at a much more efficient rate than lithium ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells.

Issues with Implementation

Determining where these microgrids are implemented was originally controversial for our team. We brainstormed this technology to make the world a better place but also understand the economic need for a company to seem viable to customers and investors. Although our eventual goal is to change the world for the better we developed a plan for scaling our company. Certain places in society have more priority of energy in blackouts. Essential buildings could include hospitals, government buildings, grocery stores, servers and traffic lights.

We all recognize addiction as a universal issue which defies time and culture. If we could change our perspectives to see addiction as the use of material or superficial substitutes to solve feelings of loneliness and ideological discomfort, we could find more effective solutions. Addiction is a reaction to a kind of cognitive dissonance when our natural mindset contracts societal dogma.

It’s important not to see this dogma as the source of their problem. It’s equally as important not to place blame on the addict and their dysfunction. Our role is to individually identify with the source of an addicts dysfunction.We shouldn’t leave this responsibility on our society to handle these moral dilemmas when they become public issues. We compromise our rightful role in influencing how society views these issues by refusing to participate and understand them on a personal level.

The addict usually tries to make up for these complex issues by ingesting or confiding in material objects or substances. This specific poster depicts the psycho/neural reaction to ingesting a drug. On one end, it’s colorful nature and the orbital forms within shows a full range of pleasure being experienced. This however is framed by a dark background which is only occupied by neural connections to represent the strain one inflicts when feeding their own addiction.