Graphic Design and Multimedia Project

Daniel Echeverri

Daniel.echeverri@mail.muni.cz


TUE 10:00/11:50


Designing an experience about love

(Based on the original approach created by Anneke Coppoolse)


This course intends to challenge the student to look beyond the creation of artifacts and instead
focus on concept development and the design of [interactive] experiences. Thus, in this Graphic
Design and Multimedia Project session, the student must think far ahead of what is obvious and
instead question how things are done. Ultimately, the purpose of the course is to conceive, design,
and develop a highly conceptual design exhibition that communicates a specific theme through
different small installations.


As a learning outcome, the student will:
  * Formulate research questions
  * Conduct research by relying on different design research methods
  * Inform design decisions and solutions based on research findings
  * Use methods of design thinking through the iterative design process.
  * Apply the principles, techniques, and other skills acquired through their studies to design an
experience.
  * Communicate concepts and processes of design.


Project Brief


In this semester-long project, the student will look at the concept of love and how it is framed,
defined, and understood through different human practices and history. As a conceptual project, the
student has the challenge to imagine, question, and communicate their ideas to an audience. As a
curated exhibition, and by finding ways to ask questions and present ideas rather than information,
each student's contribution to the exhibition will lead their audience to consider and challenge
notions about the exhibition's theme critically. Apart from the spatial restriction of this
exhibition, the student is free to imagine and visualize their installation in any way they see
fit.


Methodology


Depending on the class size, each student—or a team of two students— will select a subtheme and
will design an experience that must encompass at least an interactive element and a printed element
that the visitors of the experience can engage with. As a whole, the visitor to the exhibition will
be able to engage with different perspectives to the exhibition's central theme.


Components of the exhibition:

·         An installation space. Details about each student’s space will be announced later in
class, probably somewhere around the Faculty of Informatics building. This space must reflect the
subtheme, and it is the area where the visitor will engage with the experience itself.

·         An interactive element (not necessarily digital, although it can be bound to digital
content) that people can engage with physically. This element can be something to play with, see,
smell, touch, feel, or manipulate, among other forms of interaction.

·         A printed element that people can take home as a souvenir or that is part of the
experience itself. This element can be something to write on, read, send, fold, use to do something
else, or use with something else, etc.


To submit

Along with the setup of the exhibition, the student—or pair of students— will submit a project
report that includes the title of the installation, the concept outline, the list of content
created and a rationale about it, and visual material that supports it. This report should not be
more than two pages, and, as expected from a design student, it should be adequately presented (not
simply a flat, boring Word file). The student must present also photographic record of their
installation.


Subthemes

The subthemes listed below are possible approaches to the course’s theme and are simply
inspiration. The students are expected to find their own path to the exhibition’s central theme.
  * Just love: What is it? How do we define it? How is it experienced?
  * Love and erotism: Eroticism and sexuality as expressions of love. Does one depend on the other?
  * The science of love: Reduced to simple chemical reactions, what are love’s physiological and
chemical manifestations?
  * Love and society: What are the social expectations of love?
  * Cinematic love: How does cinema understand and represents the concept of love?
  * Love in times of COVID: What has changed in the way people love in the past two years? Is there
a change in the way we love at all?
  * Love and literature: Romantic novels, chaotic love affairs, and love through storytelling. How
do writers imagine love?