Exhibition: Disarm

The Story: The inspiration for “Disarm” actually came from a short story idea I had a few years ago—before I was a designer, a visual storyteller, I was a writer. But I never got to write that story. The note in my phone for the story concept read the following: “Girl staring at fire alarm, wanting to pull it. Anxiety. It’s not a warning.” This ultimately encapsulates the visual metaphor used for the creative spreads. “Disarm” is an artistic study of anxiety, an interactive guide meant to intrigue, inform, and allow those with anxiety to feel seen. In a world where mental health is everywhere and rarely deeply understood, I thought it was important to provide a visual vocabulary for someone to grasp onto instead of the alarm in their head.

Thesis Exhibition || Experiential Design

Objective: This project applies layered photographic imagery, typography, and motion graphics to communicate anxious feeling and thought. These layered creative spreads, accompanied by original poetry prose, a motion graphic, and an experiential wall art piece, strive put to words and image the enigma of anxiety, and provide messages of hope to encourage and calm those who read them. It showcases the complex emotional experience of anxiety artistically, while functionally providing coping mechanisms, such as interactive journaling, for the viewer to use.