SHIFT Exhibition: AUT Communication Design Grad Show
Opening Night: 7th November 2017, 6pm – 9pm
Exhibition Opening Hours: 8th – 11th November, 10am – 4pm
Location: Level 5, AUT School of Art & Design (WE Block), 27 St Paul St, Auckland, 1010
Contact: contact@shiftexhibition.com
Website: www.shiftexhibition.com
As part of AUT’s annual Art & Design Festival, students graduating with a Communication Design major hold an end-of-year graduate show. The exhibition showcases work from across specialisations of Advertising & Branding, Graphic Design, Communication Arts, and UX/UI. Before we take our first steps into industry we invite the public to come along and celebrate the culmination of our three years studying Communication Design.
To the accomplished modern designer, versatility is instinctual. Shifting disciplines and methods of thinking is imperative. This is Shift.
Our exhibition begins on Friday 7th November with a special opening night—drinks and nibbles provided. If you prefer a quieter experience, the show will be open for another 4 days where you can browse the work at your own pace between 10am – 4pm.
Preview of some of the exhibiting students:
Name: Hannah Small
Project name: Patterns for Utopia
Description: Patterns for Utopia investigates how the system of typography can be used as a tool for drawing future cities. Utopia is no place. It exists in the speculations and fantasies of dreamers. The openness of utopia has inspired the imagining of ideal futures that are free from the limitations of what is possible in the here and now. This series of typefaces can be used to construct visual maps and plans of cities. The design outcomes for this project consist of a type specimen displaying four typefaces and an interactive website: www.patternsforutopia.com
Website: https://hannahsmall.myportfolio.com/
Name: Lucas Flynn
Project name: AVA: Auckland Vulnerable Artists
Description: Auckland Vulnerable Artists (AVA) is a brand developed to represent a tribe of performing artists in Auckland city. It invokes the conflict between the ambition of young people, and the difficulty of expression for artists who experience anxiety, depression, exclusion or judgement. By representing the talents and stories of artists within the collective, AVA intends to spread a message of hope, as well as widening the pool of performing talent in Auckland. The publication and poster series are designed to advertise the project to potential members and investors, with a focus on communicating the stylistic direction of the brand alongside the scale and ambition of the collective.
Website: lucas-flynn.com
Name: Manami Miyata
Project name: Living in the In-between
Description: Being in a liminal space can be very difficult. Self-confidence can often deplete as you feel like you are deficient in both languages, therefore scared to communicate with people. Bilingual/bicultural people may share the same experience as this. You can feel confused, experience considerable conflict and struggle to establish a clear identity. My publication portrays the organized mess of the two languages (Japanese and English) within my brain. I wanted to portray that although my English and Japanese might not be perfect, it is okay to mess up or feel lost. Bilinguals should instead embrace the beauty of this imperfectness.
Website: https://www.manamimiyata.com
Name: Shaun Naufahu
Project name: Veipa ‘o e ‘Aati
Description: Veipā ‘o e ‘Āati (Dissonance of Art) is an exploration of the current dynamic that exists between customary and contemporary Pacific art. Navigating cultural standpoints that often contradict one another, it becomes hard to discern the role of cultural practices once they’re removed from their initial context. Has customary art become purely a form of revalidating cultural identity, or do it and its practitioners continue to find new meaning? Is the same held for the contemporary space or are artists inappropriately breaking protocol? Through a series of visual responses and interviews with active practitioners, this publication is a personal attempt to understand the wider context and nuances affecting a complex relationship.
Website: https://snaufahu.com
Name: Aimee Preston
Project name: Aphant: Imagination on a Spectrum
Description: I was eighteen when I realised that people could visualise things within their mind’s eye. ‘Aphant’ is an exploration into the condition of ‘aphantasia’, a condition where one does not possess a functioning mind’s eye and cannot voluntarily visualise. My project explores how a lack of mental imagery affects one’s creative process and challenges the idea that one’s imagination must have a visual element.
Website: https://www.behance.net/aimeepreston
Name: Mira Takeda
Project name: Composing by Strategy
Description: Oblique Strategies are a set of cards with written prompts that encourage creativity. With over “one hundred worthwhile dilemmas” they aim to show how lateral thinking can be used as a tool to help create in times of creative blocks and push your thinking outside your first point of reference – to initiate new ideas and ways of approaching creativity. “Composing by Strategy” is a typographically driven, experimental design project using Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies as an initiator into creating and exploring unconventional ways of composing graphics.
Website: https://mi-ra.co/
Name: Eliza McKay
Project name: Soapbox: Soap for Dirty Feminists
Description: How often do you think about the way that you brand yourself with your purchases? What makes you buy a yellow sweater over a green one? An eco-friendly bag over a plastic one? We have a natural instinct to buy things that we feel reflect our values. This year I looked at the ways that hegemonic brands like Unilever capitalise on the beliefs of a feminist target market, and whether this new marketplace feminism is injurious to the political grass roots end of feminism. I designed a fictional brand ‘soapbox’ as an experiment in designing for feminists. Placed in a supermarket context, it was intended to disrupt the shopper and bring awareness to the different ways that companies will profit off of their commodity fetishism.
Website: https://eliziemackay.myportfolio.com
Name: Anna Hughes
Project name: Generation Z: Addicts of Digital Dopamine
Description: Generation Z: Addicts of Digital Dopamine focuses on the generation that has been surrounded by data. The discourse of Generation Z is clouded by differing opinions, limited research and contradicting statements. We currently live in a society that is relentlessly throwing information at us, adding to the already confusing and inconsistent concept of Generation Z. Through deconstructing and analysing this information this illustrative publication replaces the communication barriers evident in the discourse and mobilises the research and data. Much like the discourse itself, on the surface it appears optimistic, yet, when explored further it reveals a negative and bleak reality.
Website: https://annahughesdesign.com
Name: Michael Moore
Project name: Recollection
Description: A common perception of nostalgia is that it is nothing more than an obsession with the past, but this disregards the often deeply personal experiences that lead people to become nostalgic. Through a series of interviews highlighting two different age groups, an exploration has been undertaken into the personal reasonings behind a variety of people’s engagement with nostalgia. For each of the interviewees a series of portraits have been taken which identify and represent their own personal connection to nostalgia and attempt to best communicate this information to a wider audience, in order to challenge this common perception. By collecting this information into a single publication comparisons and insights can be gained into the inner reasonings behind nostalgia in the modern world.
Website: https://www.behance.net/Michaelmooredesign
Name: Zoe Jarvis
Project name: Flashback
Description: When we feel nostalgic it’s often because we’re looking back on old photos, watching family videos, or even just listening to a song. It’s that sentimental yearning for the past that contains happy personal associations for an individual. What Flashback intends to do is to heighten the sense of nostalgia for the user, by merging their personal data back into their memories to create a more intimate user focused experience. Imagine if you could look back on a photo of you with your significant other, and see how high your heart rate got when you saw them for the first time. This sense of enhancing the feeling of nostalgia for an individual is the overall goal for Flashback.
Website: http://zoejarvis.design
Name: Toni Clark
Project name: Robin: The Home as a Living Organism
Description: This project is embedded in the idea of the home as a living organism, existing with us, not for us. It’s designed to facilitate a seamless symbiotic relationship between our homes and the environment, with the two existing as one, neither one imposing on the other. Robin is based on a future micro–living concept using off–grid resource management, exploring how we can better understand these systems within our home. This centralised home monitoring hub enables users to view their resource throughput in one interface. It allows users to gain valuable insights into their consumption with the aim of fostering environmentally regenerative behaviours. Because each users home and needs are different, Robin proposes a learning modular system which is personalised based on the users interactivity. The impact of the external environment is also considered and informing this same learning system creating an efficient living ecosystem.
Website: toniclark.co
Name: Eilish Out-O’Reilly
Project name: WasteNot
Description: In a world where choice is key and flexibility is paramount, it’s no wonder that the food outside the bounds of our kitchen is often more appealing. Utilising the food we have can seems mundane. Outdated food management practices take time and effort which many households today can’t afford. Household Food Waste is a product of this struggle to co-ordinate consumption. This project explores how this issue can be resolved intuitively through centralising household food management. WasteNot organises and orders stock on hand; providing an information layer about what’s expiring and when. On this basis the app flips recipe selection. Searching from ingredients already in the cupboard, the app provides users with recipe suggestions to utilise them.
Website: https://www.eilish.design/
