Thinking Physically with Design

Thinking physically about design is definitely something that I as a designer have never really done. It is new territory to me but I was excited to try it out.  I had the idea of representing all the ways media and the news can manipulate society using foil letter shaped balloons.  I wanted to spell out manipulation with the balloons and have posters that would dangle from the balloons and had statistics on them.

In the background of the poster I wanted to use the words I had initially tied to the facts still, so I have the words inflate, stretch, float, overfill, pop, and deflate.  The clever wordplay helps people understand what the media is actually doing to them when they listen to the news.  The silver balloons also play a factor in people realizing what the media does, as the reflection of the balloons looks back at you and makes you think about your “opinions”.

I hung this up in a study room on campus so people would see it as they drove by, pondering what it might mean.