Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

For her final school project, Natalie Kenna designed a cam­paign for an Optical Art and Geometric Abstraction exhi­bi­tion based on the 1960s Responsive Eye exhibit at The Design Museum. I had to ask whether this project was stu­dent or pro­fes­sional work, because to me it looks that pol­ished, as though it could eas­ily be an exist­ing cam­paign. Here’s a bit of back­ground about her con­cept and process:

My con­cept came from the idea of oppo­sites, black & white, the 60’s and now, is and was. Also through­out my research of Optical Art, I had con­stant eye strain as the op art images appeared to have Illusion/movement/colour change so I decided to choose the bright­est and most shock­ing paper stock I could find, some­thing that would grab the tar­get audi­ence. I wanted to sim­plify busy geom­e­try with con­tem­po­rary minimalism.

The front cover of the zine was done by a print­ing method where you print on the stock with a laser printer, you then get a sheet of omni­crom and place it over the area you want to colour, then feed it through the lam­i­na­tor, the heat from the lam­i­na­tor melts the laser ink and the omni­crom sticks only to the laser ink. It’s a really sim­ple way to cre­ate a great print finish.

I love that tip about her print­ing method — it wasn’t one I was famil­iar with. Many more images can be found right here.