Thoughts on Thesis
Publication and Figma Prototype
The Thoughts on Thesis project, as the last part of my senior fall semester, is a project that combines research and previous design work as well as future ideas into a publication and Figma prototype to ease into my thesis project in the spring semester. I decided to make this project as fun for myself as possible, as we only had three or so weeks to work on it.
My content consisted of research posts from the semester, descriptions and photos of previous work, a design lexicon of collected quotes, design terms, and personal content, and thoughts on future projects.
I began by collecting a handful of funky typefaces to experiment with. I knew that I wanted it to be a type heavy publication on account of my research being mostly written material. I settled on Adobe’s Sloop and Calibration Gothic for my display type, and Acumin Pro for my body text. I was drawn to the juxtaposition of an elegant script font against an electronic, digital one. I experimented with layering and outlines, caring less about legibility than I had in previous projects. The body text is situated in two columns, making it easy to quickly read and flexible for various spread layouts. Some of my content features data, which I switched to Input Mono, a monospaced font, to have the information be clearly lined up in columns.
The entire book is in red ink, with some pages near the end breaking into full color photos.
In the beginning of each section is a section opener, which is all red with white text, a short blurb on the section, some stats, and large display type. The next page is then a quote laid out in large display type, as well as information on where I found it and when. The quotes are random; I found that I collected funny phrases and profound statements alike, which mirrored the typography in my book.
In both the front and along the left bottom folios is a legend that applies to the entire book. It delineates content as relating to either my life, my thesis, neither, or both based on being italicized, underlined, having an asterisk, or plain text. I use this to denote funny and relevant phrases throughout the book, adding both depth and humor to the content while following my original intention of dealing with data or encoded information as part of my thesis.
The printed book is 80 pages long and perfect bound.
By using typographic combinations I ordinarily wouldn’t, and really leaning into my interests and design lexicon, I had a lot of fun designing this book! As I prepare for my thesis, this book will be a valuable reminder of the research I’ve done and interests I have. The work I do will hopefully be informed by the structure and content of my Thoughts on Thesis book.
Another part of my Thoughts on Thesis book was adapting it to a Figma prototype. I chose to create a desktop mockup of my book. I treated this portion of the project as an opportunity to learn more about designing with Figma and become familiar with a new set of tools and workflow. The language of my design was already concrete; adapting it to Figma was a fun way to bring my content to an interactive layout.
Once I learned how to connect my own fonts, which I believe are the most important and characteristic part of my design, the rest was easy. I chose to limit my content to Lexicon, Research, and Work, with Work combining future and past projects.
The Figma prototype can be viewed here.