Exhibit Design and ProcessSensed: A Nostalgic Experience is my senior thesis project, exhibited at the NEXT 2024 Festival.
Role: Graphic Design BFA’24 Candidate School: Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at the George Washington University Tools: Adobe Indesign, Photoshop, Spotify, RingPops, Chanel Gabrielle Perfume, Large Format Printing, and Multi-Colored Fishing Wire Deliverables: A series of posters, soundscape, installation guide, book, and smell and taste elements for a multi-sensory experience.
Listen to my soundscape on a new tab while you view my thesis.
Overview: This project communicates the love and happiness I associate with nostalgia through a series of posters. It explores nostalgia as an emotional and multi-sensory experience rooted in my own lived memories, while encouraging reflection and serving as a reminder to be present and fully engage with each day.
Research: I began by observing my own life, focusing on how I live, how I capture memories, and how I recognize nostalgic moments in the present. I analyzed contemporary visual methods used to represent memory and reflection. Through writing, I clarified my ideas and translated insights from my research into an initial message.
How nostalgia makes me feel — the memories that aren’t captured, but sensed.
To develop concepts and establish a visual language,
I asked myself a series of guiding questions:
What sensation does music evoke?
Why do past moments make me feel euphoric?
What triggers nostalgia?
I interviewed my Design for the Senses professor, Carl Gudenius, and applied methodologies from his course to create a multi-sensory experience. I also visited the library to study graphic design poster collections, drawing inspiration to help establish a cohesive visual style for my thesis.
Design: After completing several exploratory design exercises, I developed a structured process for visualizing and treating photographs using Photoshop and InDesign.
While finalizing the posters, I designed the installation guide. I visualized the exhibition space as a triangular prism to accurately plan the placement and suspension of each poster. I also researched tools and materials for hanging the work.
The sound component was one of the most challenging aspects of the project. With additional resources, I would have included a CD player with headphones and a custom CD featuring songs from my soundscape playlist to reflect how I listened to music during my childhood. Instead, I incorporated a QR code that linked to a Linktree with playlists on Apple Music and Spotify. The Linktree remains active, allowing viewers who encounter the QR code through my thesis book or my LinkedIn post to access and share the playlist.
Final Selection
After designing the poster series, I selected one poster to adapt into the official promotional exhibit poster for the festival. This process allowed me to design a primary visual identity using strong typography and the same design treatment used throughout the poster series. My thesis advisor, Marc Choi, shared that the exhibit poster was the strongest piece of graphic design he had seen at our school, making it one of the most meaningful compliments I received during my time in the program.
Exhibit
Impact:
Reactions & FAQs “Whoa!” “COLOR”
“What software did you use to design them?”
“Can you walk me through your process?”
“Why did you choose to suspend the posters?”
“I love the RingPops! I haven’t had one in years!!!”
Reflection: In a future iteration of this exhibition, I would place greater emphasis on audience participation and interaction. Rather than centering solely on my own lived experiences, this version would invite viewers to contribute their own memories as part of the work. The exhibition would incorporate more tactile and customizable elements, along with expanded sound, scent, and spatial components, to create a more immersive and responsive environment. This approach would shift the project from a primarily reflective experience to a participatory one, deepening the relationship between personal memory and collective experience.
Crazy 8 Sketches of possible exhibit layouts in eight minutes.