Interactive Art Installation

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2017 • 1.5 months (class project)

As a part of the graphic design studio class, I was given the brief to choose three words from the poem "Still I Rise" and create a typographic representation to convey the meaning and intent. The constraints included using either Helvetica or Futura, keeping it in the form of a square, using only black and white, and preferably using paper.

After endless ideations, feedbacks, and iterations, I designed an interactive typographical artwork inspired by origami to represent the line "Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise".

Design Process

I chose three works, 'Hope', 'Slave', 'Dream', and rapidly sketched as many ideas I could think of. The, I searched online for inspiration and added some more ideas. I learned through this exercise that the first ideas are not always the best and it's important to think of multiple, truly different ideas that are not just different versions of the same idea.

Then I narrowed down on the most completed ideas and digitized them in Illustrator.

Over a period of 3 weeks, I presented several ideas in the class to the professor and other designers. From the feedback that I received, I rejected many ideas and evolved some. I realized that I was thinking in terms of visual contrasts, so I chose a different set of words that represented that contrast in intent and meaning: "Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise".

In the last week, I began thinking of ways I could make this project interactive. I was inspired by origami form that I used to play with as a child.

It was well received by the class, but the scale of this piece was too small to do justice to the strength of the line from the poem. As I was searching for interactive art installations online, I came across this project on Pinterest. I combined both these ideas and created this piece: