Conversational tea bags that promote conversation and storytelling.

Sitting down with a cuppa can help to disconnect from tech and connect with the people around you (and yourself!). Colourful Conversations aims to help promote storytelling, conversation and mindful interaction through tea bags with fun conversation starters to learn even more about the people around you. Verbal communication is very important in this world of digital and social media and sometimes the best and most meaningful stories and conversations comes from those physically around you in the here and now.

Special thank you to my video tea drinkers and conversationalists: Luke Evans, Abbie Sturgeon, Rob Cobb, Aaron Tuveri, Satoko Furasawa, Su Choi, Louisa Luk, Kerry McGranaghan, and Giovanni Spasiano.

An illustrated card game for 6 years + to encourage viewing the world through different animal's points of view.

Animal P.O.V. was a response to a brief titled 'Powers of Observation'. Initially inspired by microscopy, I began to look into what the world looks like from the point of view of small bugs and insects. This then developed into looking how all animals see the world around them. I created an illustrated card game aimed at 6 years + to encourage children to imagine the world and see through the eyes of different animals to see things from their perspective and broaden their perceptions and observations of the world around them. 

How to Play: 

Preparation (Adult)

Adult: 

1. Ask the children to form a circle, either sitting down at a table or on the floor. 

2. Remove the contents of the pack and separate the animal cards from the monocle card.

3. Place the animal cards in a pile in the middle of the circle so that the animal characters are facing down.

4. Allocate the monocle card to a child to start the game.

5. Inform the children how to play by following the How to Play Rules (opposite).

All Players:

1. The player with the monocle card starts first. The player must pick up a card from the top of the animal card pile and not tell the players what animal they have.

2. The player must then hold up the monocle card to their eye so that they can see through the hole, as if a real monocle.

3. Next, the player must imagine what it is like to be that animal and describe or act out what they would see, hear, smell, feel and taste to the players.

4. The other players must guess what the animal the player holding the monocle is describing.

A typeface of fourteen alphabets made from printing a week's worth of my food packaging waste.

A self-set brief around the theme of upcycling and sustainability, I looked into up cycling materials to create a typeface. I decided to show the range and quantity of letters that one could achieve from waste products/packaging that would usually be thrown away after their primary use. After creating survey to see what people waste most in their households, it became clear that food packaging was at the top. My next step was using all my waste food packaging from the week and then used each piece of packing to create an alphabet. I had fourteen pieces of food packaging, so was able to create fourteen alphabets. I then used the alphabets to create a range of upcycled posters to encourage designers to 'Waste NOT. Design WITH' and experiment and upcycle materials within their designs to become more 'green' in their practice.

A re-design proposal for the NHS Organ Donation Forms and Ogran Cards.

The idea behind this project was to make the subject of organ donation more lighthearted, through the use of charming, illustrated organ characters, and encourage people to donate their organs after their death. I designed a new application form and also donor cards for people to carry around with them that states the organs they wish to donate.

A T-shirt campaign raising awareness of sex trafficking in Vietnam.

A collaboration project with a Vietnamese graphic design peer, Anh Thu Dam, raised my own awareness of the extent of sex trafficking in Vietnam and we are reaching out to girls and boys who are not informed about how to avoid being tricked into the industry. The T-shirt campaign is titled 'Yêu' meaning 'love' in Vietnamese. It is placed in brackets as this is a common trick played by the sex trafficking industry: individuals offer promises of love, marriage and a new job to unknowing victims and trick them into signing away their life into the industry. 

Tea cup packaging and tea experience design inspired by the Japanese Tai-An tea room.

SIP&SHARE was inspired by the Tai-An Japanese tea room designed by the tea master Sen No Rikyo. He believed relations between people should not be affected by class or status so the guests would all drink from the same cup, transcending class and status.

How do I use SIP&SHARE?
When you get the cup, have a sip, turn the cup slightly from where you have sipped and pass it on to your buddy/fellow guest.

To see the development work for this project please follow this link: http://forsaleunit7.tumblr.com

Circuline Typeface was created by merging circles and lines together as one, using the software Nodebox.

Through experimentation in the software Nodebox, the brief, set by Jaap de Maat and Kyuha Shim, was to produce a piece of work based around the words associated with computation, production and process in graphic design for a publication. I responded by designing a typeface through experimentation on Nodebox and I named it Circuline Typeface and then used the letter O in my typeface to visualise the word 'consistency' for the publication. 

A context brief set at university, the brief was to select one object of interest from the V&A Museum in London and research into it to create a poster advertising that object for the museum. 
 

The object I chose to look at was a Spanish, gold earring, typically worn by Andalusian gypsy girls. The daring and adventurous nature of the gypsy girls led me to look at Alexey Brodovitch, the art director of Harper's Bazaar from 1934 to 1958. His style was daring for the time and I have tried to emulate his style as poster to resemble a fashion magazine double spread to advertise the earring and a gypsy girl wearing it. Illustration drawn by myself.

A photography zine project based on the daily life of a specific person.

My subject for this brief was my grandfather and his visits to the St. Albans City market days, which he took alone due to my grandmother's inability to walk very far. His routine was to walk around the market first to buy bread and fruit and then take a stroll around Verulamium Park.

Shortly after I did this project my grandfather passed away. I would like to dedicate this work to him and his life.

Visualising the watery sounds of the xx's song Fiction into a musical score designed with water photography 

The brief was to 'visualise the sound of music'. It was a brief allowing me to visualise music in abstract or literal forms. I chose to mix the two up. I chose the song Fiction by the xx, as I was mesmerised by their watery hypnotic sound. I experimented at first with a lot of paper cutting of blue paper but didn't find it emulate the compelling sounds of the song and therefore began to experiment with water droplets and photography. I photographed water droplets to match the songs watery sound. I made each page is 8 seconds long, as It would be easier for non-musicians to read (from my own experience). it was made into a booklet to resemble piano music booklets and each droplet represents a different sound but the sound is open to interpretation by the musician.

Re-design book cover and typography proposal for Marcus Bastel's book 'Darker than Fiction'.

The brief was to redesign the cover and typographical layout of Marcus Bastel's 'Darker Than Fiction' book of short stories. The genre is not of horror but more of dark mysterious stories. I chose to keep the layout simple and tried not to add any colours immediately assiciated with 'horror', like red and black. Instead I used one of the stories involving a gun as inspiration for the front cover and kept the vector a simple gunshot wound, with grey blood which is also dropping onto the back cover. I kept a white background to emphasize this vector image.

Buns for your Bums was a short brief where I had to design something that sums up my views of my chosen pathway of Design and Interaction at university. My idea was that it is fun and we use it everyday and we have to use it everyday, so I designed food illustrations of fast food buns onto toilet paper. 

My final year dissertation topic and final piece of the Japanese design aesthetic of Wabi Sabi.

My interest in Japanese design and culture began with my Unit 8 project of researching Geisha. I then discovered the Japanese tea ceremony and ‘Wabi Sabi’, which has captivated me since. I find it fascinating how Wabi Sabi is the opposite of what Geisha represent; Wabi Sabi finds the beauty in imperfection. Born in the digital generation, everything I had previously seen and aspired to in design was mostly perfect and slick with no room for imperfection. Discovering Wabi Sabi has prompted me to question what I deem to be ‘perfect design’ and has opened my eyes to the importance of sustainability and up-cycling of materials and the west’s rampant consumerism and obsession with perfection. It has therefore allowed me to value imperfection, as perfection is a game that cannot be won. My aims in this essay are to prompt the reader to question the west’s, and possibly their own, view on perfection and to become more knowledgeable about designers designing with Wabi Sabi for the domestic residence and whether the incorporation of these designs can allow the west to ease their obsession with perfection and value Wabi Sabi in design and its benefits for all parts of life, without becoming a Zen monk. I opine that I have answered my essay question adequately with examples of appropriate designers and companies for the reader to ponder over. To further my investigation, I would delve deeper into fully understanding and experiencing how it could help the west; I would like to interview all the designers mentioned in my essay and see their passion first hand to express to the west. Also, I would visit Japan to explore the roots of Wabi Sabi and gain a deeper cultural understanding of it in everyday life, and then to other countries with their own versions of Wabi Sabi. 

As the west may not know of Wabi Sabi, I have created a ‘starter kit’ box of Wabi Sabi domestic designs for one to incorporate into their home. I hope the box and its contents challenge what the reader perceives to be beautiful and perfect in design, and begin to value the imperfections in the box’s design and perhaps other areas of life too. There is no branding or decoration and everything is kept as simple and functional as possible and everything in the box can be repurposed in whatever manner the reader sees best. The ‘box’ shape is typically associated with ‘modernistic’ design; however, in my essay, I analyse that merging modernistic and Wabi Sabi design, to some extent, could create even more variety and character in a home. Inside the box there is a leaflet and three ‘cups’ representing one of the three elements of Wabi Sabi explored in my case studies: Imperfection, Impermanence and Immaterialist. I included ‘cups’ as a subtle reminder of the origins of Wabi Sabi in the tea ceremony; the cups’ shape also represents the ‘freedom of form’ in Wabi Sabi. In the leaflet, the reader is encouraged to use the cups for other purposes too, relating to the up-cycling aesthetics. The first cup represents ‘Imperfection’ and is handmade from clay. I made the clay cup to be asymmetrical and typically ‘imperfect’ to a western eye, with many cracks that I have fixed through Kintsugi, which highlights the imperfections rather than concealing, implying they make it more beautiful. Next time, I would like to use real gold lacquer to fix it, with a professional to show me the method to achieve more authenticity. The second cup represents ‘Impermanence’ and is up-cycled from salvaged pinewood. I have given new life to the wood and have crafted it to show signs of its origins as a tree, along with preserving the screw marks from my crafting, to add a further narrative, essential to Wabi Sabi. The final cup represents ‘Immaterialist’; the cup was made by MUJI, as I explore MUJI’s aims in designing with simplicity and lack of ostentatious branding so it is not subjected to trends, and therefore lasts generations.  

The box is made from wood salvaged from a nearby skip and wood from a neighbouring Apple Tree that was cut down. These woods show the recycling aesthetic of Wabi Sabi; the marks and scratches of the woods’ previous lives remain visible to show a rustic narrative. The lid and main box are different in design to show irregularity and asymmetry, which a western eye may deem to be ‘ugly’ and inconsistent. The cups are held in place by handmade Nepalese Lokta paper and wood dust paper to show how handmade designs can add character through their ‘imperfections’ and human presence, and also to remind the reader that Wabi Sabi exists in all cultures. The leaflet is made from various handmade and recycled papers to show the variety of textures and sensory expansion that can be achieved through Wabi Sabi. The cover shows no branding or embellishment and is made from recycled wood dust. The interior is handmade Mitsumatagami paper, used in Japan for traditional printing. I used Japanese side stitch - a stitch used to easily repair paperback books. Koushiki Sans is used for the text as it is clear, functional and simple, and on closer inspection the letters are not all symmetrical, such as the lowercase ‘s’: a quiet, but beautiful, imperfection. The leaflet gently informs the reader of the main themes in Wabi Sabi and its three main elements with small paragraphs from my main essay. The box and its contents are not made to force one to use Wabi Sabi in domestic design, but rather inspire one to question the western view on perfection and try to value imperfection by incorporating Wabi Sabi aesthetics, like my essay

An exploration of the geometric qualities behind crystalline structures and designing a 3D typeface outcome.

My final exhibited work for my Central Saint Martins Foundation Diploma in Art and Design. I looked into organic structures within nature and found crystalline structures to be the most beautiful and fascinating. I chose to continue looking into their geometric structures and created a 3D typeface resembling crystal formations. for my exhibition i also showcased how the letters would be used in poster form and also created a graph paper inspired by the crystalline structures for people to create their own letters.

A zine illustratively narrating two sorrow stories about what happened to  my godmother's family during the Spanish Civil War.

For this project, I interviewed my Spanish godmother, born in Madrid, about the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, the stories she told me were truly heartbreaking and horrendous. I was shocked and deeply saddened to learn that those stories she told me were all tearfully true... and happened to her family. I decided to illustrate the stories as a way to remember her family and tell the stories of what they went through in such a dark part of Spain's history. All the illustrations are my own.