This is the link to my video essay: https://youtu.be/UZ2HOdsSmNY
Posted on May 30, 2026.
This video essay covers the development of my enquiry from Positions through Iterating and Positions through Contextualizing, as I position that enquiry within the graphic design field.
I. SITUATION
WHAT IS CIRCULATION?
Circulation is not a new concept. It describes the movement of blood through the body, money through an economy, news through a city. At its most basic, circulation is the process by which something moves through a system and returns changed.
SAGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JOURNALISM: CIRCULATION |
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism defines circulation as a process shaped by dissemination, engagement, and recontextualisation, where meaning is produced through movement rather than fixed output (Borchard, 2022). For this project, that is the definition that matters. Not circulation as distribution.
CIRCULATION IN THIS PROJECT
Circulation, as this project defines it, is the process by which textual meaning is reconfigured through changing contexts of mediation.
II. PROBLEM
Now the next part.
Graphic design has always focused on the human side. The designer, the author, the reader, but I want to shift that focus to the system itself.
In The Medium is the Massage, McLuhan, Agel and Fiore (1967) said the medium shapes how we think more than the actual content it carries. Because media doesn’t just carry information, it actively works us over. It conditions us and our societies more profoundly than whatever content is being shared.
And it is an invisible system. We don’t notice it happening, we think we’re just sending an email or posting a story but the platform has already decided how we write, what tone we use, how long it should be, who we’re speaking to. The system is doing all of that before we’ve typed a single word.
And all media are extensions of us. The book extends the eye, electronic media extends the nervous system. These technologies create environments that condition how we think, communicate, and organise our lives without us even realising. The invisible system isn’t something outside of us. It’s become part of how we function.
In Fuck Content, Rock (2009) took that idea into design specifically and said form isn’t just carrying information, it’s where meaning is actually made.
So platforms aren’t just channels. They are conditions that actively shape what gets communicated before anyone has a chance to change it.
That’s the question my project is built around: how do you make something invisible, visible?
III. RESPONSE
The starting point was a typeface based on an Emigre publication (Licko and VanderLans, 1990). Extrapolated through Steyerl’s (2012) concept of the poor image: images gain significance through circulation rather than clarity.
Each copy carries traces of its previous forms. I compressed the publication over and over, and took the degraded result and converted it into a typeface.
The typeface carries its history of circulation in its form. This is where the project began.
The Conditional Design Manifesto (Maurer et al., 2013) gave me a framework: the process becomes the product. Each iteration informs the next. Difference should have a reason. Rather than designing fixed outcomes, I established conditions that allowed text to transform.
I iterated the letter ‘a’ across five directions: legibility, freehand transition, pixel by pixel transition, movement through colour, life cycle.
Then I expanded into a sentence. Typographically through tracking, leading, scale. Individually through rewriting from memory. Socially through the telephone game (Wikipedia, 2024).
Each experiment showed that meaning shifts through circulation. But the question remained: is it people doing the shifting, or something else?
To explore this, I sent the same text to people and asked them to rewrite it as if they were sending it through a specific platform.
WhatsApp became abbreviated and casual. Gmail became formal and structured. Instagram became a single compressed sentence.
The letter became personal and expressive. The post-it became fragmented and incomplete. And most strikingly, people automatically handwrote the letter and the post-it without being asked. Nobody decided that. The platform decided it for them.
Rather than manually rewriting content across platforms, I wanted a single space where that process could happen, be tracked, and be made visible. The content is fixed. Not because it is unimportant, but because fixing it isolates the variable that does matter: the platform.
The transformation does not happen through human transmission. It happens through the machine. No one is misreading, misremembering, or reinterpreting. The drift is purely systemic. That makes it a more direct test of what the platform itself does to language.
The circulation log was directly inspired by Mindy Seu’s Cyberfeminism Index (Seu, n.d.). In most design practice, a project is finished when it is released. Seu’s index refuses that. It is always incomplete, always in progress. The longer it runs, the more it reveals. Incompleteness is not a failure. It is the argument.
Every row in the log is not documentation. It is evidence. The accumulation is the work. And crucially, where Seu’s archive is built by people, mine is built by platforms. That distinction is what this project is trying to make visible.
IV. REALIZATION
The simulation revealed a question McLuhan never asked (McLuhan, Agel and Fiore, 1967). Not just what the medium does to content, but what it discards. The website makes that visible. What each platform keeps. What it throws away.
This project is not finished. It cannot be. The longer it runs, the more it reveals. It is circulating within itself.
References
Borchard, G.A. (ed.) (2022) ‘Circulation’, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism. 2nd edn. Sage Publications.
Licko, Z. and VanderLans, R. (1990) Emigre #15: Do You Read Me? Emigre.
Maurer, L., Paulus, E., Puckey, J. and Wouters, R. (2013) Conditional Design Workbook. Amsterdam: Valiz.
McLuhan, M., Agel, J. and Fiore, Q. (1967) The Medium is the Massage. Penguin.
Rock, M. (2009) ‘Fuck Content’, 2×4. Available at: 2×4.org/ideas/2009/fuck-content/
Seu, M. (n.d.) Cyberfeminism Index. Available at: cyberfeminismindex.com
Steyerl, H. (2012) The Wretched of the Screen. Berlin: Sternberg Press.
Wikipedia (2024) ‘Telephone game’. Available at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_game
Iterated the sentence “you read best what you read most,” by Zuzana Licko, accross three directions:
Typographically through tracking, leading, scale.
Individually through rewriting from memory.
Socially through the telephone game.
Each experiment showed that meaning shifts through circulation.
Extended Critical Analyses
The Medium is the Massage means that the technological platforms we use to communicate, conditions us and our societies far more profoundly than the actual content they carry. The word “massage” is used in place of “message” to emphasize that media doesn’t just carry information, it actively “works us over completely.”
According to McLuhan, all media are extensions of human faculties: the wheel extends the foot, the book extends the eye, and electronic media extend the nervous system. These technologies create environments that subtly condition how people think, communicate, and organize social life. The text contrasts the print era, which encouraged linear thinking, specialization, and individualism, with the electric era, which fosters simultaneity, participation, and global interconnectedness. It also argues that institutions such as education, government, and work are being transformed by electronic media, though people often fail to recognize these changes because they interpret new technologies through outdated ways of thinking. Ultimately, the book suggests that artists and intellectuals help society perceive these hidden effects by revealing the invisible structures created by media environments.
The key idea is reflected through expressive typography, fragmented composition, and heavy use of images. Instead of presenting information in a traditional linear structure, the book combines photographs, bold graphics, varying type sizes, and short disconnected statements spread across the pages. This design forces readers to experience the text in a simultaneous and participatory way rather than through orderly, sequential reading associated with print culture. The fragmented structure mirrors the fast, interconnected nature of electronic media and demonstrates McLuhan’s argument that the medium itself shapes understanding. By disrupting conventional reading habits, the book’s visual form becomes part of its message, embodying the shift from linear print thinking to the electric age of immediacy and “all-at-onceness.”
What this reference opened up most is the central question of my project: if the medium is the message, what happens when the same content passes through four different media in sequence? McLuhan observed this phenomenon at a cultural scale and made a structural claim about it. My project attempts to simulate it at the level of a single text, producing evidence pass by pass. The drift score, the ghost trail, the Filtered Out page, these are all attempts to make McLuhan’s invisible environments visible. Not through description, but through accumulation.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism deepens this by reframing circulation as a process shaped by dissemination, engagement, and recontextualisation rather than simple distribution. Together, the two references repositioned my understanding of what the project is doing. It is not tracking how content moves from point A to point B. It is tracking what each environment does to content as it passes through, and what it decides to leave behind.
Mindy Seu’s Cyberfeminism Index is a living feminist archive that grows through use and keeps every trace of its accumulation visible. It directly inspired the circulation log in this project. What I am borrowing is the structural logic, not the politics.
The Cyberfeminism Index is built on a single governing principle: incompleteness is not a failure of the archive, it is its argument. Seu describes the project as “always incomplete, always in progress.” Entries are added continuously, submitted by contributors around the world, and the record of that accumulation is always on display. The index does not present itself as authoritative or finished. It presents itself as a process. The longer it runs, the more it reveals. The accumulation is the work.
The formal decisions are inseparable from the conceptual position. Seu and her collaborator deliberately future-proofed the website by using as little extra technology as possible. The typeface is Arial, a system font chosen in part because it was designed by Patricia Saunders, one of few women to have designed a widely distributed typeface. Everything is stripped back and built to last, these are not neutral aesthetic choices. A site that relies on external frameworks risks becoming inaccessible as those dependencies disappear. The form performs the values. This draws a parallel to my own project, which is built as a single HTML file with no frameworks. The restraint is structural, and in that sense the two projects share a formal kinship even if the content and politics differ entirely.
Seu’s project challenges a conventional understanding of what a designed communication object is. In most graphic design practice, a project is finished when it is released. The Cyberfeminism Index refuses this. It is explicitly unfinished, explicitly collaborative, explicitly dependent on future input. This asks a question underexplored in communication design: what does it mean to design something that keeps going after you let go of it? The gaps in the index, which Seu acknowledges openly, are themselves evidence of the limits of what the archive does not yet know. The holes are part of the argument.
The most direct influence on my project is the circulation log. Before encountering Seu’s work, I thought of the log primarily as a functional feature. Seu’s practice reframed it. A log that accumulates and keeps every trace visible is not just a record. It is the argument made tangible. This led me to think of the In Circulation page differently, not as a history of what has been processed, but as evidence. Every row is a record of a platform conditioning content. Every trace is a ghost trail of transformation.
Where my project diverges from Seu’s is in authorship. The Cyberfeminism Index invites human contributors. My simulation replaces human transmission with machine processing. The log grows not through human intention but through systemic indifference. What the two projects share structurally, they separate conceptually. Seu’s archive is built by people, mine is by platforms. That distinction is what my project is trying to make visible.
References drawn from the course reading list that situate your project in a broader discourse or conceptual domain:
Steyerl defines the “poor image” as a degraded image that circulates through processes of compression, copying, and redistribution. While dismissed within traditional hierarchies of image quality and value, the poor image gains significance through its accessibility and capacity for circulation. Rather than being fixed, it is continually re-edited, recontextualised, and reinterpreted, with each image carrying traces of its previous forms. In this sense, the poor image exists in reality, sustained by its movement rather than its accuracy.
A key aspect of Steyerl’s argument is that circulation transforms authorship. Users become “editors, critics, translators, and (co)authors.” This decentralisation of control challenges traditional notions of originality and ownership, suggesting that meaning is not preserved but reshaped through distribution.
This text informs my project by shifting focus from visual degradation alone to the broader implications of circulation. While Steyerl discusses images, I extend her framework to typography, asking how text behaves when subjected to similar processes of repetition, rewriting, and sharing.
Drucker examines how knowledge is produced and interpreted through visual forms, particularly within digital environments. She argues that interpretation has historically been text-based, but contemporary electronic spaces require new modes of representation that can accommodate collective forms of authorship. As information circulates through social media and digital platforms, it is constantly mediated, reshaped, and recontextualised. Drucker raises the question of how fragmented yet connected perspectives can be visualised in ways that make their relationships legible.
This text informs my project by framing circulation as a dynamic and multi-directional process rather than a linear one. In response, I explore how iterative versions of a sentence can be presented in a way that reflects their interconnected transformations. Rather than producing a fixed, static outcome, I use animation as a medium to visualise the mutation of the text, allowing multiple states to coexist, overlap, and evolve over time.
This approach reinforces the idea that meaning is not singular or stable, but produced through shifting relationships between versions, viewers, and contexts.
A reference that is specifically related to your project in its topic (theme or subject matter):
This issue features an interview on type design for early computer screens, where Zuzana Licko discusses the relationship between technology and legibility. She argues that typefaces are not inherently legible, but rather that legibility is shaped by familiarity and reading habits. The statement “you read best what you read most” suggests that repeated exposure establishes what is perceived as normal and comfortable to read. This challenges the idea of a fixed standard of legibility, positioning it instead as something learned. Licko’s approach to her low-resolution typeface further reinforces this idea, as her designs respond directly to the limitations of screen technology. Despite their pixelated appearance, these typefaces remain readable because users adapt to them over time and they remain legible, scaled up or down.
This text informs my project by framing legibility as a product of repetition and exposure rather than clarity alone. Using the sentence “You read best what you read most,” I test this idea through iterative acts of reading and rewriting. By subjecting the text to processes of compression and redistribution, the project examines how familiarity, memory, and context reshape both the text and meaning over time.
A reference that is specifically related to your project in its medium or method:
The manifesto outlines a methodology in which the process becomes the product. The outcome is not predetermined, but through the use of process, logic, and input, the design will follow. Central to this approach is the idea that each iteration informs the next, creating a chain of decisions where “difference should have a reason.” While structured by parameters, the system also allows for unpredictability through external input. This system reflects a model of circulation, where each transformation builds on a previous state.
It is relevant to my project, which is based on iterative acts of reading, rewriting, and resharing. Rather than designing fixed outcomes, I establish approaches that allow text to transform through circulation. Constraints such as tracking, leading, scale, and composition act as controlled variables, while human actions such as memory, misreading, and reinterpretation introduce variation.
By adopting a conditional design approach, the project positions transformation as a result of intention, reinforcing the idea that meaning is not fixed but continuously reshaped through use.
A reference that demonstrates a critical position in context of your specific topic, medium, or method:
In On Gathering, Mindy Seu redefines authorship as a collective and evolving process, where knowledge is produced through shared acts of selection, interpretation, and retelling. Drawing on storytelling traditions, she describes how stories are not passed down as they are, but adapted by each storyteller in response to the context and audience. This positions gathering as a collaborative practice, where meaning is shaped through personal interpretation and communal exchange rather than fixed transmission.
This perspective informs my project by framing circulation as an act of collective authorship. By introducing a delay and asking participants to recall and rewrite a sentence from memory, I create conditions where reproduction is replaced by interpretation. Each participant reshapes the text based on what they perceive as meaningful, allowing subjective differences to emerge through the process. This reinforces the idea that authorship is distributed rather than singular.
A wild card reference (identify another type of relationship, or re-use any of the above prompts):
The telephone game is a method of passing a message sequentially from one person to another, where the content gradually changes due to either mishearing, memory, reinterpretation, or a collective of all three. Although it is often presented as a simple children’s game, it demonstrates how information transforms through human transmission, with each participant unintentionally altering the message. This process highlights the instability of communication and the role of individual perception in shaping meaning.
This concept informs my project as a model of analogue circulation, contrasting with digital forms of distribution. I apply this structure by sending a recorded sentence to multiple participants, who are asked to recall and rewrite it under controlled conditions. In one iteration, responses are collected from ten different individuals, producing multiple variations from a single source. In another, the sentence is passed sequentially from one participant to the next, allowing changes to accumulate over time.
These experiments demonstrate how meaning is selectively preserved, altered, or lost based on individual interpretation, reinforcing the idea that circulation does not transmit information neutrally, but actively reshapes it.
A short statement (100–200 words) that articulates your line of enquiry.
My project asks how text survives circulation. Does meaning remain stable as it is repeatedly shared, or is it gradually transformed through use? It also questions whether legibility guarantees understanding, or if familiarity reshapes interpretation over time.
To explore this, the sentence “You read best what you read most” is subjected to iterative acts of reading, rewriting, and resharing. As it circulates across memory, systems, and platforms, shifts accumulate and meaning begins to drift. Circulation becomes the mechanism that produces variation. While each version remains legible, instability emerges in interpretation, slowing the reader down and disrupting certainty. By the end, the origin of the text becomes unclear.
Through this process, the project proposes that circulation does not preserve meaning, but reshapes it. Readers become co-authors, rewriting meaning, so that what is read most no longer remains the same.
Pixels are used as a mechanism that contributes to the misreading and transformation in exploring the afterlife of text. Scale, spacing, and placement become visual indicators of how far a sentence has travelled through circulation and how much its meaning has shifted.
By placing 2D illustrations into 3D space, I use light to question perception, degradation, and transformation.
Shadows function not as absences, but as imprints of light. They become projections that record form. As light passes through the object, information is selectively removed or emphasized, raising the question of how much can be lost before an image loses its identity.
The following video demonstrates how the 2D illustrations exist and interact within a 3D space, showing how light alters and transforms the perception of the image.
Object: Paper Clip
Light Source: Point
Object: Paper Clip
Light Source: Sunlight
Object: Volkswagen
Light Source: Point
Object(s) to form the Volkswagen: Banana, Croissant, Crayon, Telephone, Umbrella, Chilli, Chair, Kodak Charmera, Marlboro, Lemon, Paperclip, Shrimp, Frog, Snoopy.
Light Source: Point
Methods of Contextualizing Exploration: Data Through Sound
To explore alternative ways of contextualizing data beyond visual representation, I investigated the possibility of experiencing data through audio. The aim was to allow carbon-emissions data to be understood intuitively through sound rather than solely through reading charts or graphs.
I began by reimagining the musical score as a framework for data representation. Instead of using a traditional musical clef at the beginning of the staff, I replaced it with powers of ten, transforming each line of the staff into a numerical scale. Musical notes were substituted with passport stamps, representing journeys taken by students traveling to their hometowns. These stamps were used as markers to measure the carbon emissions associated with two modes of transportation: railway travel and long-haul flights.
However, this approach proved difficult to read, and it only represented two transportation modes while excluding others. To simplify the visualization, I experimented with using the musical whole note to represent the total carbon emissions generated by each country. This allowed the data to be summarized more clearly within the score.
After visualizing the data in this format, I became interested in how the emissions data might sound when translated into music. I therefore converted the carbon-emissions data from different regions—Asia, Europe, North and South America, Oceania, and the United Kingdom—onto a musical staff.
I then imported the score into music notation software and selected the piano as the instrument to test how Asia’s carbon emissions might be interpreted sonically. Building on this experiment, I developed an orchestral score in which different instruments represented different regions: Asia was represented by the piano, Europe by the bass guitar, and North and South America by the violin.
Though this direction generated a lot of interest due to its new and engaging approach, it was ultimately not pursued further due to time constraints, and it did not fully align with our group’s enquiry and the project brief.
Asia Student Hometown Travel Audio
Asia, Europe, North and South America Student Hometown Travel Audio
Prompt Part 1: Statement
At the beginning, our group prioritised visual outcomes, focusing mainly on how climate data could be translated into engaging graphics that were easy to follow. However, after reviewing key references, we began to root our compositions more strongly in context in order to deepen the narrative and improve audience understanding. Our enquiry gradually centred on the idea of collectiveness, translating quantitative data into a visual language that could communicate emotion while remaining grounded in evidence.
We used comparisons of carbon emissions to help audiences understand the scale of impact and to highlight that addressing emissions is a shared responsibility. This shift made us more critical about the proxies we selected, ensuring they were meaningful and relevant to the public rather than purely visually appealing. Through this process, my awareness of climate justice grew, particularly in relation to international students who often travel long distances due to structural educational systems rather than personal choice. Because of this, we aimed to present the information without assigning blame to individuals with limited alternatives.
Publishing the project as a website instead of print also aligns with the Net Zero plan by reducing material use while making the work accessible to a wider audience.
References
Drucker, J., 2014. Graphesis: Visual forms of knowledge production. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
E-flux.com. (2017). Accumulation – Wendy Hui Kyong Chun – On Patterns and Proxies. [online] Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/212275/on-patterns-and-proxies.
OMA. (2025). Diagrams. [online] Available at: https://www.oma.com/projects/diagrams.
D’lgnazio, C. and Klein, L.F. (2020). Data Feminism. CrimRxiv. [online] doi:https://doi.org/10.21428/cb6ab371.95cefa5b.
Reenakallat (2025). Aqua Atlas, 2023–2024 – REENA SAINI KALLAT. [online] Reenakallat.com. Available at: https://reenakallat.com/aqua-atlas-2023-2024/.
Office, E. (2010). Powers of TenTM (1977). YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0.
Prompt Part 2: Annotated Bibliography
Texts Inside the Reading List:
Drucker’s text influenced how we approached the role of graphic design within our project, particularly in thinking about digital platforms as interpretative spaces rather than neutral containers for information. Her discussion of designing environments that support critical engagement encouraged us to rethink the purpose of our website. Instead of simply presenting climate data, we began exploring how interaction, pacing, and visual language could help audiences engage with the topic more proactively. This shifted our focus toward creating a more humanistic digital experience. In our project, this meant designing the website to feel interactive, visually engaging, and approachable, so that viewers could reflect on the implications of carbon emissions rather than only reading numerical data. We wanted the design to support contemplation and understanding without overwhelming the audience. Additionally, Drucker’s idea of working in a “constellationary mode” also reflects how our group developed the project. By combining insights from multiple references alongside our different design skills, we created a process that prioritised interpretation, collaboration, and the development of a shared visual language around climate responsibility.
This article helped shape how we think about the use of images and visual proxies in communicating climate change. Rather than treating images as straightforward evidence, the text made us more aware that visual representations, such as satellite imagery, diagrams, or data visualisations, are publishing choices that influence what becomes visible and how audiences interpret it. This idea became important in our project because we rely on several proxies and metaphors, including circles, scale, and satellite imagery to represent carbon emissions. These choices do not simply illustrate information, they frame how the issue is understood. The text encouraged us to reflect on the duality of proxies: they can build trust and also cause mistrust. As a result, we became more careful about the images we selected. Instead of focusing only on environmental damage or negative representations of specific countries, we aimed to show that these places are also sites of community and everyday life. This strengthened our narrative approach, presenting individuals, streets, and communities alongside environmental impacts, emphasising climate change as an interconnected system shaped by daily life rather than individual fault.
Texts Outside the Reading List:
This reference influenced how we approached the role of diagrams in translating complex data into a visual format that is both accurate and accessible. Rather than viewing diagrams simply as illustrations, we began to understand them as a way of carrying information across contexts and audiences.Working with a rich scientific dataset, this idea encouraged us to carefully consider how the information should be distilled and structured so that viewers can understand scale, comparison, and relationships more clearly. Since our studio-based experiment resulted in a website, we designed our diagrams to function within the digital environment, ensuring they remain readable, navigable, and engaging. This informed our decision to create ozone-inspired bubble diagrams that are scaled to the interface while still representing the numerical data as accurately as possible. While our project aims to evoke an emotional response, this reference reminded us that clarity and precision are equally important when informing audiences about global concerns. As a result, we balanced expressive visual design with careful data representation so the diagrams support both understanding and reflection.
This article influenced how we thought about the politics behind data visualisation in our project. It made us question the appearance of neutrality in graphics. Rather than assuming that data can present an objective overview, we became aware that every visual choice shapes how audiences interpret the issue. We designed with the third principle of data feminism in mind: elevating emotion and embodiment. Because our project involves both personal circumstances and global systems, it became important for us to acknowledge our own positionalities as designers and participants within the issue we are representing. Recognising this helped us avoid presenting the data as detached or purely statistical, and instead focus on the specific message we wanted to communicate. It also pushed us to think about what comes after raising awareness, ensuring the project guides the audience toward reflection rather than leaving the information unresolved. Therefore, we designed to emphasise collectiveness rather than separation between countries. Moving away from design minimalism, our diagrams function more like a living system made up of many interconnected parts, reinforcing the idea that climate impact is shaped by shared structures rather than individual actions alone.
Design Practices/Projects:
This design project influenced how we approached the integration of imagery into our visualizations to create emotional and contextual resonance. Instead of presenting data against a neutral background, Kallat uses hand-painted oceans to frame water consumption patterns, giving the numbers narrative and emotional weight. Drawing from this approach, we introduced life-style and geological images of Asian countries as backgrounds for the ozone-inspired circles that represent the amount of CO₂e emissions. By layering the illustration over narrative imagery, we aimed to make environmental impacts more perceptible and meaningful, helping viewers connect abstract measurements to real-world consequences. This strategy shaped both our visual language and our approach to audience understanding: images act as a bridge between complex numerical data and human perception, enhancing clarity while building awareness. The project reinforced the value of affective engagement in data translation, demonstrating that visualization can communicate both scale and significance. For our website, this translated into a visual hierarchy that is both informative and empathetic, guiding users through the data while supporting comprehension and reflection on the broader environmental context.
This video influenced how we structured the sequence and pacing of information within our website. Rather than presenting all the data at once, we began to think about how scale can be revealed gradually so that viewers can build an understanding of complex measurements over time. This was particularly relevant because carbon emissions and CO₂e values are difficult to grasp when presented only as numbers. Inspired by the film’s movement between different orders of magnitude, we adopted a similar zooming structure in our project. The website begins at a smaller scale, introducing CO₂e through comparisons with the different type of travels before moving outward to larger datasets related to travel emissions. This progression allows viewers to first understand the unit of measurement and then see how it expands within broader environmental systems. This reference also shaped our thinking about how audiences navigate information. By revealing data step by step, we aimed to make complex environmental information more digestible and less overwhelming. As a result, scale became not just a visual device but a way of helping users interpret scientific data and understand its significance.
The education system has often…
taught us that form follows reason, meaning that research comes first. We are expected to understand the materials, context, and references before creating. In Unit 1, being asked to create as a form of research was difficult to grasp at first. However, I began to notice that the ideas and visuals we produced, both my own and those of other students in the class, were different from the designs we created when following the form follows reason approach.
When research happens through making, the process becomes more open. You are not as restricted by assumptions about what could or could not be. Instead, the main limitation becomes the context in which you choose to situate your work.
The education system has often…
taught us that context must come before the design, and that adding context halfway through a project is considered superficially justifying the work. However, through my projects I have realised that additional reading and discovering new references later in the process can actually strengthen and ground my practice. It is not superficially justifying the work when it deepens the enquiry and expands the research.
What could be considered superficial is forcing connections that do not genuinely relate to the work. But when new ideas and references contribute to the development of the project, rather than simply covering it like a coat, they become part of the research-through-creating process.
The education system has often…
taught us to prioritize clear outcomes and polished results. As a consequence, the process, the enquiry, and the experimentation, is often sacrificed or oversimplified to make it more digestible to the audience. Yet, if we critically examine the information we aim to present, we can design specifically for the audience that will engage with it.
In this context, the emphasis on flawless results becomes secondary. While clarity and refinement are still important, the focus should be on finding the most effective way to convey the message using the right visuals. This approach is far more impactful than simply prioritizing a final outcome.
This publication explores how light can reshape the way we perceive objects. Using Blender as a tool for graphic exploration rather than traditional 3D modelling, the work investigates how images change as light passes through form and removes or emphasizes visual information. Through processes of simplification and alteration, familiar objects are gradually transformed.
The title Life in Shadow reflects this idea. The objects in the work only become visible and take form when light interacts with them. Without light, they disappear back into darkness. The publication therefore questions how much information can be removed before an image loses its identity, and whether these transformations eventually make the original object obsolete.