Brief
To initiate (from a design enquiry or otherwise) a self-directed project to solve a design problem, explore visual aesthetics or otherwise.
The Mayfly Project - an enquiry on ephemera
Throughout my years in art school as a design student, one thing that always bothered me about design work was the amount of waste that design work produces - even as a student, the amount of paper/material wasted in doing test prints, prototypes and coursework reaches astounding numbers.
Hence, I created the Mayfly project as a way to open up the conversation about the ephemera we produce as designers, and what we do with these ephemera at the end of their life cycle.
A sample of the expired ephemera (past their lifetime) that I collected on one trip
Part (i): Branding
To unify the project, I needed a brandmark or something that could be applied to works created under the project - hence, it needed to be something that is relatively simple (and therefore able to complement most works) and yet quickly recognisable/iconic.
A variety of different logotypes were considered, but I eventually went with an abstract form instead of a typeface logo as typefaces were harder to read. Also in the spirit of the project, I wanted to try for something that had a anti-corporate, anti capitalist vibe, borrowing heavily from the visuals of zine and self made/homebrew culture.
The intention behind the branding was not necessarily to make things look more 'professional', but rather to be the opposite of that - to encourage people to be bolder with their design choices; to experiment and make new things from the old.
The logo: An upward arrow that ends in an explosion of sparks - signifying the process of turning over ephemera to give it a bright new lease of life.
The Mayfly Project: Brand Guide
The Mayfly Project: Brand Guide
The Mayfly Project: Brand Guide
Part (ii): Illustrating possible works + execution
As an example of works that can be created under the Mayfly Project, a series of illustrations were conceptualized and produced, screen printed on collected pieces of ephemera to create one-of-a-kind art prints.
The first series of illustrations were based around the concept of 'Renewal'; i.e. the renewal of ephemera, giving them a new lease of life by creating with them.
An initial sketch for the first concept collection
The first piece in the 'Renewal' series: The Discovery
The second piece in the 'Renewal' series: Scalar perspectives
The third piece in the 'Renewal' series: Reflection
After the conceptualisation of the illustrations, they were screenprinted onto selected pieces of ephemera with the drawing fluid method - tracing the positive image onto the screen, blocking out the negative space with drawing fluid before washing it out.
This process was full of trial and error - the pigments had to be manipulated properly depending on the printing substrate, and alot of work had to be redone to ensure that the illustration stencil had a suitable amount of detail without being too fine that it could not be recreated on the screen.
Part (iii): Putting everything together
As a proposal to develop the project further and increase its outreach, a website was designed as a information portal for the project to showcase the various initiatives under it.
The website aims to be (a) a landing page for people to find out more about the project, (b)a collection of resources for people who are interested in participating in the project (including the brand guide/upcycling ideas), and (c) eventually become a showcase of projects done under the Mayfly Project.
Visually, the website was very much inspired by early myspace/ 'low-tech' websites of the early internet age - the collage aesthetic that holds a strong do-it-yourself, limitless energy of the early internet era echoes the anti-establishment and counterculture attitude that I wanted to bring to The Mayfly Project.
For the website, I chose to use Figma, a prototyping software for both web and mobile applications. Instead of creating a dedicated app for this project, I decided to stick with a website as I wanted to maximize accessibility — making it compulsory to download an app to interact can paradoxically limit the access and appeal of the project to the target audience.
Screenshot of Cameron's World, a web collage of archived GeoCities pages.
Websites like these from the early internet served as a very strong visual reference for the website.
Screenshot of the 'About' page of the website
Design System (website)
For each section of the website, I named them under different types of ‘space’ — (Guided) Space for the brand guide, (Hijacked) Space for the showcase of repurposed works under the Mayfly Project brand, and (Finding) Space as a landing site for collaborations and to call for designers to donate their ephemera to the project. The use of the word ‘space’ refers to both the website as a platform and the uncapitalized potential ‘space’ in all the ephemera, to be reused and repurposed.
(Guided) Space holds the brand guide both online and in a downloadable pdf, as well as the logo assets for any designer to brand their work under The Mayfly Project.
For collaborative participants, (Hijacked) Space showcases repurposed objects that users can submit to an online gallery.
(iv) The presentation booth
To bring the project all together, I had to create a booth design that was able to showcase the vibrancy and variety of the ephemera used, but still make it feel like it belonged under a coherent visual identity.
The main focus of my booth design was to present the screen-printed work in a more formal looking setting; to present them as valuable artworks that could speak for themselves, rather than just mere trash. Thus, I decided to mount and frame them up as unique pieces of art on the main panel, as if presented in an art gallery, with the side panel as the only panel with text to describe the work. To properly showcase them as works belonging to a series, I chose a piece of each illustration in the Renewal Series to display together in one large frame instead of keeping them separately in their own individual frames, keeping in mind:
- The sizes of the ephemera themselves ( I tried to showcase a variety of paper sizes)
- The best integrated illustrations (where the artwork was best integrated with the existing design of the ephemera).
Instead of framing each work specifically in frames that were fit perfectly to size, I chose frames that were slightly bigger to widen the border between the artwork and the surroundings — it helped to isolate the works from the busier background noise and thus made each work, with their complex interaction between the designed ephemera and the printed artwork, stand out more. The implementation of black as a constant in the frames, the mounting board (custom-cut to fit each frame) and the painted background board was also a conscious choice — it reflects the visual aesthetic of the website, and helps to tie all the different aspects of the project together, with all their disparate colours and visuals.
