Starting this semester, I find myself in a strange in-between space: I know I’m supposed to move toward a Master’s topic, but instead of clarity I mostly feel a kind of conceptual restlessness. Every idea I touch opens up into three more. I’m interested in too many things, pulled in several directions at once, e.g. visual culture, politics, public space, feminism, design as a form of intervention rather than decoration.
So choosing just one topic feels way to definite, not sure if anyone is also struggling with this as well.
But three potential directions keep returning to me. They are not fully formed, but they feel like possible starting points or loose constellations of thoughts:
1. Design Homogenization & the Global Aesthetic
One theme I keep circling around is the increasing sameness of contemporary design. Cities, ads, apps, brands or anything branded really -> everything is starting to look suspiciously uniform. Global companies rely on neutral sans-serifs, minimal palettes, clean universality. Instagram trends travel faster than local cultures can react.
This makes me wonder:
- What gets lost when visual culture becomes globally streamlined?
- How do local identities survive within systems that reward sameness?
- And what does “authenticity” even mean when aesthetics circulate so fast?
This topic pulls me in because it sits between design, culture, and the politics of globalization and because I feel this tension personally every time I walk through a city and can’t tell where I am anymore.
2. Posters as Social Touchpoints
A second direction came to me by being showered with content about the pudding mit gabel events or the look-a like contests that all started because of some “badly” designed poster. Therefore, I’ve realized that posters don’t just communicate but they connect. They create tiny moments like someone stops, someone smiles, someone takes a photo, someone feels seen or irritated or even big moments like big events and community buildings. These different interactions fascinate me.
I’m curious about:
- How analogue media can trigger social encounters
- What kinds of posters invite participation or emotional response
- Why physical touchpoints feel increasingly valuable in an overstimulated digital world
This approach would let me stay close to the city as a living laboratory, observing how design behaves “in the wild,” and how people respond to different visuals and what they will act upon.
3. Visual Protest & Everyday Feminist Interventions
The third direction ties into my long-standing interest in feminist protest. Not the big marches or iconic placards, but the small gestures – subtle, low-budget interventions that slip into daily life: stickers, posters in odd corners, tiny disruptions that shift the energy of a space. Basically what I have been researching for the past two semesters as well. I’ve been noticing how powerful these micro-protests can be, especially in gendered environments where a lot remains unspoken.
Some questions that orbit this theme:
- How does subtle visual resistance reshape public space?
- Which aesthetics make feminist protest feel urgent, playful, or subversive?
- What happens when protest becomes intimate rather than spectacular?
This line of thinking feels personal, political, and directly connected to the work I’ve been doing over the past months.
And Now?
Now I just have to decide… If anyone is reading these blogposts, I’d love to hear some opinions :)) (Actually might not even chose between these three ideas, even during writing this post, I got a few more ideas)
Hi Lina!
I feel your struggle and can really relate to having too many ideas.
The three you wrote down here are all super interesting and great topics for your thesis.
Don’t know if this helps or makes things more complicated or if it even makes sense at all. But I thought I’d just drop my thoughts here:
What if you combine idea 1 and 3? And kind of compare the uniformity of global design to subtle protest designs. Maybe you could focus more on topic 3 because I think there is less research in that field (maybe I’m wrong). I feel like because the uniformity of everything actually creates space for the space to protest bc it stands out just by looking different.