Big Idea

Working to such a short deadline on such a large spec project can always seem tedious, but it gives me the deadline to work to and help me achieve a goal at the end of the work. This project especially pushed the boundaries in allowing me to learn boundaries to work within as well as how hard to push myself to make the project work.

My concepts explored themes that I hadn’t previously worked with, especially the second idea that I developed that was more akin to a fine art piece than a piece of graphic communication. This pushing of discipline to its maximum made me realise that graphic design isn’t about what you learn from the classroom and experience around purely graphic design, but also the multitude of other experiences that you have with people and concepts in other disciplines, which is this case bordered on fine art.

The concept itself worked well, in my mind, at delivering the meaning of holism as I viewed it, and allowed other people to experience it through interaction, a continuing theme across work that I have done this year. I think the jump to involving the audience in the design was important on conveying the meaning which explicitly implies the involvement of everything the idea comes into contact with. If I worked more on the project, I would have created a range of these characterising sets, to build a space that was purely about holism.

The Big Idea was all about being as adventurous as possible with a word chosen from a selection of 20; I conducted research and development around the word Holistic, with the outcome becoming an interpretation of what I believed the word and my work should convey.

Holism is explained as the parts of a whole being intimately interconnected where you can only reference them in terms of the whole. A simple interpretation of this idea is often described as “Seeing the Bigger Picture”, being able to see how these parts engage with one another to allow the whole to work.

This could be compared to the idea of wisdom and intelligence; you can pertain the knowledge of knowing certain parts can be part of a whole (wisdom), but to know how they work with each other to become a complete item, you must understand how each engages with others and how that affects other parts (intelligence).

A quote by John Muir explains the complexity with simplicity: “When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe”. To show this I want show this concept through a three-dimensional installation that requires multiple strands to create the piece along with the audience becoming an integral piece of the design

Bilbio-Tec, created by Marina Soto, Júlia Beard, and Jofre Sanfeliu

Heineken Glass Room created by Gabriel Finotti, Solenn Robic, Hick Duarte, Marcelo Gerab, and Jonatas Pontes

Closed Worlds, created by Natasha Jen and Pentagram

Concept 1 – Characterising

Take a single character or symbol and explore its past and present uses in the world. This would be shown using an explosion of information with an origin point of the character of choice.

| Creates a link between the conception of the character and the present uses of this character

| Embodies the very idea of Holism by allowing you to understand how everything works in conjunction

| Requires the user to engage to understand, further pushing the idea of holistic upon the audience

Concept 2 – Essence

An exploration of the senses, this would be an installation piece that shuts off the audience from the world by removing one sense at a time until there is nothing; at this point each sense would be put into effect one at a time before showing them altogether. This would establish how taking everything into account with one another is an important component of design

| Feels more alike to a fine art piece compared to a piece of design. It is an experience

| Conveys Holism through experience instead of through feeding knowledge

Of these two concepts, the more adventurous one is the latter which would require a lot of time and money investment to create a piece that would work at a level that was intended. The first concept is one that I have decide to continue with as it allows for more experimentation through the development process as well as being an easier concept to develop with the time and money that I have available to me.