Media Design Studio Blog

 Handheld Media Climate Change & What You Can Do About It Handheld Media Handwritten Handheld Media Digital What topic did you select and why? The topic I selected for this assignment was climate change, and more specifically, the role each person plays in contributing to it and to help prevent it. Upon initial consideration, I wanted to choose an alternative topic. Throughout the creative process of making design decisions, all of my ideas came back to how it can best suit the needs of a reader understanding this topic. It is for this reason, I decided to stay with a topic I care so strongly about as I strive to encourage others to take steps to take action on this issue. Who is your audience? Everyone! The purpose of this handheld media in particular is to be accessible to every person. Because there are no expectations for the human impact on climate change, I intended to make my media as presentable as possible across demographic groups. The mix of illustration and statisti...

"For those like me with ties to the international school community and/or receiving education abroad as an international student, it’s time we step up. Our experiences taught us a lot, but it also made us complacent. We embody the privileges that are embedded within our ability to assimilate in countries in which we reside as we curate our own global existence by cherry-picking their culture and living experiences. A lot of the times we let things we know are inappropriate go unchecked because we feel it’s not our place, or that the issue does not pertain to us. That has to stop now. We’ve seen the world, now we have to make it better. We can no longer proudly rep our internationality without claiming any baggage of racial injustice and systematic inequalities. Our knowledge gives us power - our perspective as global citizens. So let’s talk about it. How can we do more?" I wrote the above statement on June 8th, 2020, amidst the Black Lives Matter protests. It is the reason wh...

I chose the topic of climate change with a guide to help fight it. I chose this topic because I took an environmental geography class a couple of semesters ago, and there was some interesting information I learned I thought I might be able to incorporate into this assignment. I also knew I wanted to create something informative similar to the two artifacts I chose to discuss in this week’s discussion being the “So You Think You're an Ally - Zine” and the “How to be a trans ally: A beginner’s guide”. I wanted to use similar aspects from both of these artifacts and thought this topic would make a decent fit in a similar approach. The audience I am mainly targeting are those who believe they can do more for their environment in their routine. The audience does not necessarily have to be on either extreme of the spectrum. As climate change is a global issue that will extend over a long period of time, I want my audience to be a wide range of people. This is part of the reason why I mad...

 The topic I selected is Voter Registration - specifically changing your voting registration. It's especially relevant to me seeing as I just moved states and had to go through the whole process of re-registering to vote. It's also relevant because it's at the time of a crucial election where registering to vote is at an all time high. My audience is for those who haven't voted, are voting and have moved, or are changing political parties. I decided to do it as simplified as possible and with pictures so it might be more visually appealing to people. I also chose red and blue for most of the colors because they're representative of our countries colors and you see it everywhere around election time. I selected my format/medium because it involved one that I wasn't that great at(drawing/arts & crafts). I really enjoyed the zine we did earlier this week and I'm already fairly well-versed in photoshop/indesign so I decided to challenge myself with an unfami...

For this week, I decided to look a little deeper into cemented constructs of social equity, diversity and inclusion. I wanted to choose something that was an infrastructure of communities and can help move us forward. I chose The Green Party, the liberal party in politics that is more recently surfacing and the impactful changes of socialism.  I wanted to steer away from the election itself, and focus more of why people should get engaged and involved with this party. We are told "Go Vote, it's your right!" But that invites ignorant voting - and while you believe you are voting for the right person, you may not know everything their party or their campaign is about. I wanted to use this platform to talk more about understanding the makeup of a party, and why a candidate (mayor, senator, president etc) should be voted in. My audience is definitely young voters - I want my generation, and those younger than me - to start understanding the impact we can have on our own count...

Cover of "Friendly Neighborhood Bisexuals" For my zine project, I created “Friendly Neighborhood Bisexuals”; a zine looking at Bisexual + terminology and experiences. The audience I had in mind when creating this zine was queer and questioning adolescents. The copy and content are indented to be informative, but approachable. In a sense it offers no definitive answers; either for identifying where one falls on the spectrum, or on coming out. However, it speaks to terminology and experience that fall within the bisexual and queer community in an “entry-level” fashion. Additionally, it can be used as a resource for young people navigating questions of identity.  The title of the zine is tongue-in-cheek. It is a reference to the “Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman” comic. Which isn’t about bisexuality; but I digress. The term “Friendly Neighborhood XYZ” gets thrown around casually on the internet a lot. It often alludes to being content in one’s identity, and an interest in the su...