Suzhou Project

The purpose of this project was mainly a cultural exchange, and served me as an opportunity to take inspiration from another culture. As communication designers embedded in a global community, it is important to understand that visual communication is a borderless language, and sometimes we might face design situations that will challenge us to expand our learning boundaries.

In my case I was assigned the Chinese city of Suzhou, not a widely known city among the international community. The project consisted on designing an informational poster for the conference "Doors of Perception 10" for that specific audience, and I had to pick a determined location where that conference was going to be held. The theme of the conference was John Thackara's vision of "learning" in his book "In the Bubble"—used in a previous design exercise. After several failed trials, I had to go back to basics and focus on the history and architecture of the Gardens, and use elements of its locality in my design; the focus of the design execution of the project was placed in the way I was going to manage the typographic elements.

Additionally, we had to create a promotional piece for the conference. The use of design elements had to be aligned with the aesthetics employed previously in the posters. So I decided to build the letters and create a stop motion that would be literally illuminated, to mirror the feeling of being illuminated by knowledge. Since these Gardens are very ancient and have a long history of wisdom, I paired the motion piece with Tibetan signging bowls commonly used in meditation.