Designing for surprise—and provocation
The story of T.Fab (t.fab / T.FAB)
T.Fab was a one-day pop-up-shop that me and Mackenzie Dunn created in a hallway at CMU. The experience was designed for a ‘Play Lab’ assignment — to “create something that surprises.” We wanted to use that surprise to make people stop, think and question their expectations, so we created a dual-sided experience: one side a familiar (fun, tasteful) ‘retail environment’; the other a shocking (loud, dark) ‘factory environment’.
Our ‘customers’ could choose to ‘purchase’ a t-shirt in ‘retail’ for a hypothetically-fair price we calculated based on an American living wage, or choose a ‘discount’ tee from ‘the back’. Customers who chose the ‘discount’ were handed an unfinished shirt with at least one seam undone, directed to a sewing machine, and informed that every extra minute they spent finishing their shirt would increase the price.
Shared elements on each side solidified the simultaneous connection and disconnect we have with our stuff and the companies that make it. The typeface on all materials and logos is the same, but used in different weights; the logo in the ‘factory’ is set in all-caps, while the ‘retail’ logo is small-caps, italicized and angled; the stylish red-brown of ‘retail’ becomes overpowering on the walls within the ‘factory’; the sharp yellow secondary color is used for piercing warnings instead of fun accents.
The jarring shift from the ‘retail customer’ experience to the ‘factory worker’ experience underlines how closely connected the two really are, while emphasizing how our experience of the one remains utterly unconnected to the experience of people in the other. Ask yourself: who makes it so? And, more importantly: who benefits?
“t.fab is a t-shirt pop-up shop.”
“we are purveyors of quality goods made with integrity from the best materials.”
“we at t.fab believe in connecting our customers with the story of their clothing.”
“T.FAB is a t-shirt fabrication lab.”
“our goal is to help our valued ‘customers’ / employees connect with their own clothing.”
“the T.FAB Lab provides the opportunity to gain perspective on how the things we take for granted get to us.”
