This semester wasn’t about following a straight path. It was about collecting fragments like ideas, images, words, impressions and trying to understand what they might be pointing toward.
When I started, I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. I knew only that something felt off. Design felt tired. Too polished. Too predictable. Too disconnected from real life. So I started paying closer attention to the things that don’t scream to be noticed: a scribbled message on a wall, a broken tile, a flyer stapled over a hundred others. Somewhere in that visual noise, I found honesty.
Through writing, collecting, and reflecting, a theme kept returning: the value of the in-between. The things we pass by. The messy, random, imperfect traces that make spaces and media feel alive. I began to see randomness not as a lack of structure, but as a kind of truth-telling. The uncurated becomes a mirror and the overlooked becomes material.
I also began to look more critically at visual culture. Not just what we’re making, but why. Do we need more posters or do we need to read the ones that already exist more closely? Do we need to add to the noise or help people make sense of it?
This project became something of an experiment in slowing down. In resisting the pressure to produce finished, polished things and instead sit with the progress. Let randomness exist. Let fragments be fragments. Let the design be about presence, not performance.
Maybe what I’ve been doing all semester isn’t building a project, but developing a perspective. A way of seeing that values what doesn’t demand attention. And that might be the most valuable tool a designer can have.
Sources:
Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press, 1984.
