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  • This Side This Side This Side Up: Book This Side This Side This Side This Side Up: An Alternative Approach to Social Design is my graduate thesis, completed for Pratt Institute's MFA Communications Design program. The thesis advocates an approach to social design in which design acts as neither problem solving nor critique, but as a catalyst that shifts perceptions and propels its audience to action. This divergent approach focuses on design as an experiential medium capable of disruption. Designing an intentional disruption of everyday life can alter or broaden a person’s perspective, instill empathy, and ultimately prompt a shift towards more prosocial behavior while still allowing the audience agency.

    I designed my thesis book to reflect the central component of disrupting perception and acknowledging multiple ways of experiencing the same reality. The book reads in multiple directions, and there is no clearly indicated "correct" order that the reader should observe. Everyone will ultimately end up reading the same words, but the order in which people read them depends on what direction they started with. These varied narratives end up influencing the way that a reader comes to understand the thesis.         2015 Graphic Design
  • This Side This Side This Side Up: Installation This Side This Side This Side This Side Up: An Alternative Approach to Social Design is my graduate thesis, completed for Pratt Institute's MFA Communications Design program. The thesis advocates an approach to social design in which design acts as neither problem solving nor critique, but as a catalyst that shifts perceptions and propels its audience to action. This divergent approach focuses on design as an experiential medium capable of disruption. Designing an intentional disruption of everyday life can alter or broaden a person’s perspective, instill empathy, and ultimately prompt a shift towards more prosocial behavior while still allowing the audience agency.

    The requirement to show my thesis in a gallery setting presented a challenge, since all of the projects I had completed for my thesis were designed to live in very specific contexts, none of which were remotely like a gallery. Putting these contextual designed objects in a gallery space would, for the most part, turn them into little more than curious objects or artifacts documenting something that had happened elsewhere. For this reason, my final project became an attempt to communicate the components of my approach to social design through form and interaction in a way that is contextually specific and relevant to the gallery setting.

    The meaning behind each concept is revealed through interactive or expressive typography, and this interactive typography lives on the exterior of several custom-built cabinets installed in the gallery space. Inside a few of the cabinets are designed objects that illustrate its corresponding component; these are the projects that can exist in context inside the gallery. In the other cabinets, however, there is a conspicuous lack of a project. These cabinets may contain minimal documentation of work, but their main purpose is to direct visitors to where the project has been installed in its actual context, outside of the gallery. This both preserves the work’s context specificity and acts as a commentary on the gallery space as one large cabinet of curiosity.         2015 Graphic Design
  • Bodega Sans Bodega Sans is a typeface inspired by the letters adorning bodega awnings across my borough of Brooklyn, New York: utilitarian, bold, and often stretched, squashed, or otherwise warped. Bodega Sans is a geometric typeface with humanist characteristics and quirks that reflect the character of its source.     2015 Typography
  • Living in the Blur Living in the Blur is a project addressing the ongoing gentrification of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in two parts: a large and information-dense “knowledge map” and a less direct, more experiential catalog. Both pieces essentially act as a conversation amongst Crown Heights residents; or, more specifically, the resulting narratives are meant to act as half of a conversation. Intended for an audience of other Crown Heights residents, this audience's response is the missing half of the dialogue. As a resident of a gentrifying Crown Heights myself, I noticed that though we hear and read and even speak a lot about gentrification, there is a tendency among some residents to approach the topic in a relatively impersonal way. Gentrifiers are particularly loath to label ourselves as such; few among us like to talk about gentrification as a process in which we play a role. There is a need, however, to be an active participant in dialogues about our shifting neighborhood, to insert ourselves into the conversation that does, in fact, concern us. By acknowledging our place in this process, we will be capable of attempting to affect it. This project acts as an invitation to do just that.

    The language in both the knowledge map and the catalog came primarily from conversations I had with Crown Heights restaurant owners and managers, supplemented by existing articles and interviews from various print and online publications. I spoke with people from a number of local restaurants, both new and old, about their experiences opening and running a restaurant in contemporary Crown Heights, how that experience has changed since they opened their doors, and interaction with their peers and customers. The conversations naturally led to a larger discussion about the shifting, gentrifying neighborhood in which we reside. These restaurant owners and managers were the ones to determine who else I should speak with; at the end of each conversation I asked them to direct me to my next location. This relational process of collection and curation significantly shaped the project, as I was directed to a wide variety of restaurants. I deconstructed the conversations into fragments and the pieces were stitched together to create a new language, a collective conversation.

    The written language is one translation of this new language, but the form of the designed objects also reinforces and communicates central concepts. The type in the catalogue has frequent and extreme discretionary ligatures, translating the idea of connection between individual parts. The catalogue also has no specified beginning or end; one fragment of conversation transitions into the next in a seamless loop. The idea of self-insertion, or an invitation to join the conversation, is translated in the knowledge map through large gaps in the columns of text. Readers can literally or metaphorically fill the spaces with their own responses.
    ____

    “Given how wealth and income and education are currently distributed, very few neighborhoods stay diverse for very long… so the edge of gentrification will be mixed,
    but as time goes on, it won’t be… It’s a blurry line, and we lived in the blur.”

    -Mike Fagan, social services worker, as quoted by Vinnie Rotondaro and Maura Ewing in “The Ins and the Outs” on Narratively         2015 Art Direction
  • Trolls vs Woman A prototype game addressing online activism and harassment, with a particular focus on the gaming community and Anita Sarkeesian’s harassment on Twitter.

    All tweets used in this game are real examples of the harassment and threats directed at Sarkeesian on Twitter, tweeted @femfreq. They are an (incomplete!) representation of just two days of harassment, all from January 20 and 21, 2015. The tweets were originally documented and posted on the Feminist Frequency Tumblr.

    Content warning for misogyny, gendered insults, victim blaming, incitement to suicide, sexual violence, rape, and death threats.         2015 Interaction Design
  • In Dialogue In Dialogue is the second limited edition publication of its kind produced by Pratt Institute’s Graduate Communications and Package Design Department. The book provides an alternative to the typical design school catalog; more student-led, more personal, and therefore far more indicative of the GradComD environment and experience.

    Dialogue is central to a GradComD student’s education and thus it is the central concept around which this publication was constructed. The book contains conversations between current students, interviews with faculty, and longer roundtable discussions with a variety of people affiliated with our program. The concept of dialogue is not restricted to words; we investigated the relationship of visual elements, a dialogue between forms, and the more conceptual dialogue between design theory and practice. The book is organized so that even its structure creates a sort of dialogue with its reader.

    With the invaluable help of faculty, students, alumni, and friends of the department, In Dialogue was designed and developed by a small team of Pratt GradComD students and faculty. The book team worked collaboratively on concept, design, interviews, content development, editing, and original photography.

    Designed in collaboration with fellow Pratt GradComD students Sarah Bradford, Eduardo Palma, and Rob Wilson. Creative Direction by Jennifer Bernstein, Visiting Associate Professor, Pratt GradComD and Principal, Level Design Group.

    This project was recognized by the 2015 Core77 Design Awards as a Professional Notable in the Visual Communication category, and by Design Observer's 2014 50 Books | 50 Covers.         2015 Print Design
  • Inflection Point Inflection Point: The point on a curve at which the direction of the curvature changes. A point of separation of an arc concave upward from one concave downward.

    Inflection Point: The 2015 Graduate Communications Design MFA Thesis Show at Pratt Institute. A critical intersection. A point of departure for directional, conceptual, and formal design explorations. An investigation of design, culture, and new methodological pathways. A directional shift. The collective works of Trang Tran, Kristen Myers, Lillian Wild Duck Ling, Alicia Burnett, Eduardo Palma Díaz, John Lunn, Zhitong Zeng, Xiao Han, Jieun Lee, Rob Wilson, and Juan Carlos Rodríguez-Rivera.

    Graduating MFA Communications Design students collaborated on the concept and design for the visual identity, exhibition, catalog, and website.
    ____

    Print Design: Jieun Lee, Rob Wilson
    Exhibition Design: Alicia Burnett, Lillian Ling, Kristen Myers, Eduardo Palma Díaz, Trang Tran
    Web Design: Xiao Han, John Lunn, Juan Carlos Rodríguez-Rivera, Zhitong Zeng
    Copywriting: Kristen Myers, Rob Wilson         2015 Art Direction
  • TASC The After-School Corporation (TASC) is a New York City-based educational nonprofit focused on advocating, funding, and implementing after-school programs and expanded school days in low-income urban schools. I began my work with TASC as the organization decided to shift their visual language away from an old brand identity that tended towards a more typical, emotional approach and towards a new, more candid and information-driven approach that appeals to the policy makers who support TASC and its endeavors. Though still colorful and warm, the current identity is less childlike and emphasizes simple lines, symbol systems and information design.     2015 Art Direction
  • Speculative Social Design Methodologies Ridiculously Long Subtitle: A Design Process and Approach to Categorize a Community’s Social Systems as a Method of Change by Using People-Centered, User-Centered Sustainable Services, Developing Places for Designers to Work on Projects, Think Through Problems, Creating Objects and Experiences that ask, “How?”

    Speculative Social Design Methodologies is a methodical means of investigation that acts as a foil to my more typical means of learning through trial and error. It’s a critical look at the contemporary tendency to develop and define so many “new” social design methodologies, many of which are ultimately very similar processes.

    After assembling a large collection of what I consider to be social design methodologies, approaches, and philosophies, I selected five actual methodologies and analyzed them down according to a set of variables: the number, arrangement, and content of the component steps or principles, the specified medium, and the specified functionality. I mixed and matched these deconstructed variables to create three new, speculative social design methodologies. I had differing degrees of control over the construction of these new methodologies; for example, every variable in Methodology #1 was randomly computer generated, leaving me with an inflexible, linear process that wouldn’t allow me to even have a conversation with my audience. At the other end of the spectrum, I had complete control over choosing the variables that make up Methodology #3 and ended up with a much more iterative, flexible, and ultimately successful design process. I applied all of these new, speculative methodologies to a common, small-scale social issue: a single New York City resident who doesn’t vote in the primary elections.

    The primary goal of this experiment wasn’t necessarily to find a design solution that made this person vote. The focus was on evaluating the methodologies against each other rather than measuring whether or not each individual methodology “worked.”         2015 Art Direction
  • Why Can't You Just Take A Compliment? Why Can't You Just Take A Compliment? is a project that battles street harassment with site-specific, subversive signage. Based off of a real personal narrative, the 18 signs span the three blocks where the original incident occurred and escalate in size and intensity of color. The gendered words have been flipped in order to speak directly to the men who encounter the signs, attempting to represent the experience of street harassment for those who don’t deal with it on a daily basis, prompt reflection, and potentially change behavior.     2013 Art Direction, Graphic Design, Street Art
  • Slow Beyoncé Pop culture is consumed quickly and therefore, for the large part, mindlessly. Though powerful and influential because of its incredibly widespread nature, many consider it frivolous and fleeting, so pop culture often goes without serious contemplation and critique. Slow Beyoncé recycles the familiar language of pop culture, specifically pop music, juxtaposing representations of pop music with lyrics sung by other pop artists to create social and cultural critique and prompt an open-ended response of the audience’s invention. I took preexisting pop culture artifacts like posters and YouTube videos, added an unexpected extra layer of song lyrics, and placed the altered pop culture artifacts back into public space for them to be discovered and consumed in the way that the original artifact would have been. The juxtapositions created relatively enigmatic dialogues about issues such as class, race, and body image. Because the altered artifacts were disguised as regular pop culture objects it was more-or-less guaranteed that any person who took or viewed one of them would be someone who seeks out pop music, is familiar with the pop vernacular, and is a consumer of pop culture. Since pop music is likely already a part of these people’s lives, anyone who encountered one of the posters or videos should be someone who understands the altered artifact’s references and is able to derive some sort of meaning from the juxtaposition.

    By disrupting the typical, rapid consumption of pop music, those of us who operate in a pop culture context have the opportunity to become more mindful; those cognizant of what they’re consuming can reflect on and question it as they continue to encounter it, potentially changing their behavior or interaction with pop culture in self-determined ways.

    Dialogue and commentary generated by the project is anonymously tweeted @slowbeyonce.         2015 Art Direction
  • Dissent Adding our voices to the dissent: an excerpt from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion on Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby as read by Elizabeth Adams, Jessica Bathurst, Pearl Brady, Alicia Burnett, Anna Eckhardt, Naima Hyppolite, Madeline Jacobs, Sylvia Kim, Marie Luongo, Amy Ovecka, Shannon Stagman, Trang Tran, and Alissa Vladimir.

    This project was referenced by Justice Ginsburg in a July 2014 interview with Katie Couric.         2014 Art Direction
  • Splice Splice is a reflection on and critique of the philosophical concepts of Friedrich Nietzsche and Theodor Adorno as they are either reinforced or contradicted by contemporary popular culture. The spliced images are a visual reflection of Nietzche's interpretation of the Apollonian and Dionysian in his book The Birth of Tragedy.     2014 Art Direction
  • Mapping Red Hook Red Hook in Brooklyn, New York was one the regions most affected by Hurricane Sandy. The neighborhood was submerged in up to 10 feet of water; had no electricity, heat and hot water for up to 17 days; and limited access to food and aid. The storm and lack of immediate on-site federal aid only contributed to Red Hook residents feeling neglected and unsupported.

    Mapping Red Hook is the result of a three month collaboration between Pratt Institute and AIGA DESIGN/RELIEF. Pratt graduate students assisted the AIGA DESIGN/RELIEF Red Hook team by conducting on-site mapping and research in preparation for a community-info HUB project initiated by AIGA. Our findings were presented to a board of AIGA representatives and compiled into an interactive process book.

    www.mappingredhook.prattgradcomd.com         2014 Art Direction
  • Take Something Leave Something Take Something Leave Something is a small-scale, interactive disruption and investigation of American capitalism and consumer culture.

    It began as a simple spatial intervention, attaching an inherently participatory object (brightly colored binder clips) to scaffolding around the city without any preconceptions about content or meaning. The binder clips were a means of making a particularly dreary part of the urban landscape more lively, appealing, and interactive. This intervention evolved into a guerrilla trading post, installed near large, corporate chain stores to present customers and passers-by with the option to trade something of theirs for an item left on a clip rather than simply buying something. Some of the objects initially left clipped to the scaffolding were site-specific (items that could actually be purchased at a nearby store). We also experimented with attaching money to a few of the clips, so that the user was selling rather than buying, determining the monetary value of an object for themselves. The items taken and left changed and varied greatly as people began to notice the installation and trade.

    This project is a collaboration with fellow Pratt MFA Candidate Rob Wilson.         2014 Art Direction
  • WomanHOOD A collaboration with The WomanHOOD Project, an afterschool mentorship program for young women of color in the Bronx.

    The collaboration resulted in 1,000 newsprint posters, created to be distributed to the young woman who take part in the program, and a looping motion piece; with both, we sought to strike a balance between WomanHOOD’s collective values, sourced from many members of WomanHOOD, and a more individual narrative provided by one member that explains her personal identity, her thoughts on feminism and womanhood, and why these concepts are so important to her. The visual language is complex in order to communicate a movement and message that’s stronger because of its complexity, not in spite of it, and translate this through a form that was deliberately complicated, cacophonous, and fast-paced.         2015 Art Direction
  • 2014 Pratt GradComD Orientation Materials The 2014-2015 GradComD Communications Committee, a group of five second-year students in the department, were jointly responsible for planning events and designing the corresponding materials for the Fall 2014 Pratt GradComD student orientation.

    In addition to designing and producing printed collateral (and biker-themed temporary tattoos), we organized and installed Scope, an exhibition of faculty-nominated GradComD student work. An orientation meet-and-greet was held in the GradComD Gallery, doubling as an opening reception for the exhibition.         2015 Art Direction
  • Subway Faux Pas Bingo Subway Faux Pas Bingo is a game that grew out of the daily frustration that accompanies commuting to and from my job in Times Square. The pictogram system begins with five basic elements that can be found in a Subway car (door, pole, seat, objects, and people), the building blocks for essentially all irritating Subway behaviors. Additions are made to these simple illustrated symbols in order to denote a specific Subway faux pas. I turned this system into a game of bingo, with playing cards distributed throughout stations and trains and available for download online. An additional web component serves as an archive and a way for those taking part in the game to “play” against others digitally, automatically posting any Instagrammed photo with the hashtag #subwayfauxpasbingo to the site. Ultimately, this game aims to make a frustrating experience into something fun and entertaining.

    www.subwayfauxpasbingo.com         2014 Art Direction
  • Assorted Print Design Slow Dialogues Posters:
    A series of promotional posters for the lectures and workshops staged by slowLab during their Fall 2014 residency at Pratt Institute. Instead of printing a new set of posters for each event we considered the principles of slow design and risograph printed on the same set of posters weekly, adding a new layer with information about each upcoming event. Designed and printed in collaboration with fellow Pratt MFA Candidates Rob Wilson and Eduardo Palma.
    ____

    This Side Up / Be Open to Multiple Truths:
    A non-orientational poster, printed on a risograph.
    _____

    Triangle City Prints:
    A colorful, kitchy series of triangle risograph prints.
    _____

    Unenthusiastic Greeting Cards:
    For sale on Etsy!         2015 Art Direction
  • Urban Farm Educational Toolkit The Urban Farm Educational Toolkit is an interactive, customizable game that teaches an urban farm's youngest visitors about the natural processes that occur there in an entertaining and hands-on way. In addition to the game itself, we created a website with step-by-step instructions outlining how to make the game's wooden signs so that our design is available to any organization that might benefit from its installation.

    The project grew out of a collaboration with Added Value, an urban farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Added Value is a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable development to neighborhood youth.

    Each station of the game features an instructive sign made of three pieces of repurposed wood painted with informational text and symbols. We engraved the wood with rounded text before painting to make it easy for organizations to touch-up the paint over time and fastened the pieces of wood together with zipties.

    The game utilizes the strategies of creative placemaking, wayfinding, and triangulation in a playful, pedagogical way.

    This project was a collaboration with fellow Pratt GradComD students John Olson and Kiran Puri.         2015 Art Direction
  • 3 3 is a visual journey through New York City neighborhoods along the 3 train line. Rather than presenting straightforward photographic documentation of the neighborhoods, the images are heavily blurred to imply motion and convey a sense of place.     2013 Art Direction
  • Camouflage Camouflage is an interactive, transmedia narrative that invites participants to consider American politics as a form of performance.     2013 Art Direction
  • There Will Never Be Silence: Scoring John Cage's 4'33" A concept for a promotional motion graphic for MoMA's exhibition There Will Never Be Silence: Scoring John Cage's 4'33"     2014 Art Direction
  • Activate Activate: Fostering Access to Healthcare in the Rockaways grew out of an initially daunting assignment; several teams of designers, each assigned a New York City community particularly affected by Hurricane Sandy, were to identify a barrier to that community’s resilience in the face of future climate change and design an effective solution. With the invaluable assistance and input of residents and community leaders in Rockaway, Queens, we found that barrier in a lack of access to emergency healthcare. Our solution was an activist campaign and designed system that could ultimately live within and be easily replicated by members of the Rockaways community.

    This project was a collaboaration with fellow Pratt MFA students John Hallman, Alicia Burnett, and Zhitong Zeng.         2013 Art Direction
  • Call Yo Momma As children, we live with and depend on our mothers to teach us how to navigate daily life. Soon enough, however, we grow up and move away; our routine interactions fade. How can we maintain a meaningful relationship with our long-distance moms? For this project, I collaborated with fellow Pratt MFA Candidate Amanda Sepanski to design a solution to this problem.

    This project was featured on GOOD and
    Fast Company.         2013 Art Direction
  • Planned Parenthood of New York City Over the past several years I have actively volunteered at and designed for Planned Parenthoods across the country. These pieces show a sampling of work done for the Planned Parenthood of New York City Action Fund Activist Council to promote volunteer-led fundraisers and events.     2014 Art Direction
  • The Walrus and the Carpenter The Walrus and the Carpenter is a project exploring type and image through book illustration and design. The Lewis Carroll story is told in two separate books, one entirely illustrated and one entirely typographic, in order to force the reader to view these basic components of design differently than they typically would; they must rely on image as the sole means of communication and on text as the sole aesthetic component of the book.

    The project was later reconceived to be shown in a gallery setting. The books become giant, interactive, filppable spreads mounted on the wall of the gallery in order to maintain the inviting, playful nature of the project.         2014 Art Direction
All works © Kristen Myers 2015.
Please do not reproduce without consent.