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)

In the beginning of November, we visited the CoSa Museum in the Joanneumsviertel Graz with the whole study program to get inspiration for our own gamification approach. But I would like to use it as a topic for one of my Impulse posts as well as I found the different approach for a museum very interesting and even within the exhibition there were some interesting differences.

I saw two of the exhibitions, there are way more, but it takes a while to even go through one of them. The first exhibition was about finances – the history of it, how to handle it and how our world is managed by it. The exhibition started by handing each visitor a small card that could be used for quizzes throughout all the rooms that would save your points etc. Therefore, visitors would be more interested and hooked to actually go through all the rooms and do the tasks to – then in the end – do a checkout and get a receipt with your score. I think the Concept and approach was interesting and a good idea, on me it did not work at all, because the reward in the end was not enough fore me; for a friend on the other hand it worked really well, and she really wanted to do all the tasks because it was enough for her to gather a very high score. I found this observation very interesting, because it showed how different our rewardsystems in our brain work and how that plays with our motivation for a (rather dry) topic. Another reason why I did not like the exhibition that much was the fact that it was all just pretended gamification. What do I mean with that? One game was for example to steer a containership from Europe to South America (on a screen obviously) But after 2 seconds it was clear that you didn’t actually do anything for the movement and the controller were just fake for you to think that you have an impact on the game. And basically all of the games were like that, and I lost interest very fast and almost did not finish any of those games. Of course, you have to keep in mind that the normal target group for the exhibition is children or young people that are still in school, but I would guess that they are even less concentrated or have the attention for a non-working game.

The second exhibition was way more interesting, it was not specifically about one topic but covered things like optical illusions, illness and lab diagnoses, AI content or how a car is built. And from the second I stepped into the room; I immediately understood that this is actually gamified and not like the other exhibition. Even the rooms were designed in a way more intuitive and natural way, it was more chaotic but then way more interesting to discover the different areas of it. Even though there were no reward systems or anything that would hook you until the end. And it was very touch and do- based, a lot of buttons, cranks or shadows to play with. They built and actual hospital room were you could get “blood” from the patients and analyse them in the lab next to it – and also be wrong about things. I think thats actually a main and important factor about gamification – that you can fail or lose and have to try again. Therefore it feels more important and interesting.

Connecetion to communication design:

The visit made me think about how strongly spatial communication influences user experience and engagement. The first exhibition felt extremely flat because the space was designed in a very sterile, minimal and almost liminal way, it had clean colours and no real sense of discovery. It communicated education rather than interaction, and because of that, even the attempts at gamification felt forced. The second exhibition in comparison used space almost like a narrative tool. It allowed visitors to explore, wander, and follow their own curiosity. For communication design, this highlights how important the design of an experience is: gamification is not only about scores or tasks but about creating an atmosphere that encourages participation. Gamification depends on emotional involvement, and emotional involvement depends heavily on how a space (off or online) is constructed.

It also raised the question of how communication designers can intentionally build environments that support learning, experimentation and play without feeling manipulative or superficial. Good gamification is a form of communication design, and it works best when it creates meaning not just motivation.

How can I use this for a potential master topic?

One idea I had is to connect this experience to my thoughts around design and globalization, especially how information is communicated across cultures, languages, or contexts. Gamification could be a meethod to make complex global systems, such as supply chains, political structures or gendered spaces more understandable through interaction and embodied experience. Another direction could be to explore how gamification can support or challenge feminist or activist communication. For example: How can playful interaction be used to reveal power structures? Or how can spatial or digital gamification become a tool for subtle protest?

Links:

CoSa Joanneumsviertel Graz
How Gamification Motivates
Social Interactions and the Dynamics of Protest Movements

Last week on November 12th, I watched the documentary movie Schulter an Schulter (“Shoulder to Shoulder”) as part of the Crossroads Festival in Graz. The film brings together five long-term Antifa activists who, for the first time, speak openly about the backgrounds, motivations, and practices of an unusually organized and professional movement that confronted the growing neo-Nazi scene in reunified Germany after 1989. After the movie, activists from Graz also openly spoke about their experiences with antifa and activism.

I found the movie very interesting as the history of antifa is shown in a very clear and understandable way through archival material, personal recollections and reflective interviews by five activists from Germany. Also, the documentary traces how antifascist activism evolved from spontaneous street protests into structured networks of resistance. It portrays not only the confrontations with far-right groups but also the internal debates, emotional strain, and solidarity among activists who dedicated decades of their lives to anti-fascist work.

What fascinated me most is how Schulter an Schulter positions activism as both a historical and emotional practice, something that operates within and beyond visible protest actions. The film exposes how collective resistance requires organization, communication, and strategy, all forms of design in themselves. This connection between activism and design deeply resonates with my current research interests, especially around how protest is communicated, visualized, and mediated.

As a communication designer, I found the film relevant in two key ways.
First, it shows the power of narrative framing: how a movement is represented over time strongly shapes its public perception. The Antifa movement in Germany has long been reduced to stereotypes – often portrayed as radical, chaotic, or violent – yet this documentary humanizes it, showing the strategic, ethical, and emotional labor behind it. This reminds me that design, too, carries responsibility for framing social and political struggles.
Second, the film’s aesthetic approach relying on authenticity, honesty, and long-term perspective rather than shock or spectacle aligns with my growing interest in subtle, reflective forms of protest communication.

In relation to my potential master’s research, Schulter an Schulter raises important questions:
How can design contribute to the documentation and visibility of activist movements without simplifying them? What role does visual communication play in shaping public understanding of resistance?
And how can we as designers, engage with political memory,  especially movements that are often marginalized or misrepresented?

The film also left me reflecting on the infrastructures of protest: flyers, posters, coded communication systems, and collective symbols that circulated among activists. Many of these tools are examples of grassroots communication design created under pressure, with urgency and purpose. I’m inspired to explore how these visual and material artifacts of resistance could inform contemporary design practice, especially in feminist and activist contexts.

Finaly, Schulter an Schulter was not only a historical documentary but also an impulse to think about design as a form of resistance  through slogans or aesthetics as well as how we construct narratives and meaning.

Links:

Crossroads Festival Graz

Schulter an Schulter – Antifa Film

Weil der Staat versagte