Nov 2, 2017
Taking inspiration from Paul Elliman we arranged and took photos of objects in the shape of the letters reading 'stuff matters'.
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Taking inspiration from Paul Elliman we arranged and took photos of objects in the shape of the letters reading 'stuff matters'.
Throughout this project it's been a struggle to bring together both social and cultural awareness into a single symbol without it being too literal or cliche. However, after regrouping and discussing the outcomes from individual experiments we decided to focus on the concept of awareness and found we liked the word 'stuff', it was all encompassing and conversational. The three of us decided that we would work with letters, rather than a symbol and to make a newspaper structure reading 'STUFF MATTERS'. 'Matters' seemed to fit as it can read as both something of importance as well as an issue that demands consideration.
We formed each letter by taping together tubes of newspaper, the more difficult letters were the curved ones, however, we taped certain areas tighter and added extra newspaper for support.
We decided to hang the letters from the ceiling. We though it was bold and demanding, which was a fun contrast to the throwaway word 'stuff'. Each letter was connected to its neighbour and 'MATTERS' would be placed directly below 'STUFF'.
After the process was finished, we used lights to work with shadow and capture interesting photos of the final result. Additionally, we moved the text into a hallway of the college, so that it would block pathways and people would be forced to interact with it and realise that stuff matters.
Black ink on white paper responding to the logo ethos
One of the first projects was to create the logo for an attribute considered integral to a good designer. Ours was the idea that a designer should be aware of the social and cultural world around them. The first step was as a class to collectively create 3500 small drawings onto 60 different sheets of paper. Each paper had a noun at the top, and in rotation we all had to draw it on the paper according to specific directions. For example, a self portrait in five seconds. Because they were based on instinct, we felt free to not overthink or overcomplicate the icon.