How I Repurpose

How I Repurpose is my graduate thesis book, completed for Pratt Institute’s MFA Communications Design program. It tells the story of my thesis, which strives to explore how design can be used for meaningful contemporary storytelling. I set out to repurpose the “plot,” “characters,” and/or “setting” in projects in an effort to redefine the role of the designer as storyteller. 

Year
2014

Range of work
Master's thesis
Book concept & design

Methodology.  I practiced the design tactics of collection, appropriation, and collage—which were key in my thesis methodology— in the making of the book. The introductory images for each chapter, for example, are images found on Google when searching for the title of the chapter.

Form. The design of the book also exposes the process of research and writing. Parts of the book are typeset to reference Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” mode; the orientation of these pages also causes the reader to flip pages after pages up, reminiscent of scrolling down on a screen. The abstract, project statements, and container sections like Table of Contents are, in contrast, very purposefully designed (with a large, bold, almost ugly san-serif typeface) and presented as "final" (not in Word).

This dichotomy between the finality of certain parts of the book and the editing mode of other parts serves to highlight my feeling that the process of research is not complete and still in “Track Changes,” even if the container of my thesis has been finalized.

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