AARON WINEY
Many of us rarely consider the myriad of expectations that dictate our thoughts and actions. Often we go about our days feeling happy when our expectations are met and frustrated when the actions of others contradict how we expect the world to work.
As designers, our work also relies on expectations. We expect our audience to be able to decipher the visual language we use to create. We expect our tools to work as they worked the day before, our partners and coworkers to perform their project tasks, and the client to pay when the job is complete. But what happens when these things don’t work as expected?
This thesis explores how expectations impact the way we interpret our worlds. In this exploration, I analyze my professional experience in the creative field in light of these expectations, and seek to understand how both embracing and breaking expectations can foster or inhibit creative engagement.
Designer, instructor, musician, brewer, bird watcher, book hoarder, and general outdoor lover based in Warsaw, Indiana. Probably a few other things too.
What Might Be
by Aaron Winey
For my birthday my parents
broke their glass
to gift me the pieces
So I collected the shards
littered by friends and mistakes
and words and fears
to be tumbled and melded
into form, jagged and blushing
with the light of countless fires,
stars, and a sunrise so bright
it makes my eyes sweat, glistening
limbs squinting to embrace,
grasping, bleeding open
in the glare radiating
waves of w h a t m i g h t b e
(AI song reference: “Ripple” by Grateful Dead)
UNFINISHED
ANGELA PALADINO
My thesis book, Unfinished: Communicating Grief and Healing Through Handmade Textiles, documents my research into the historical and contemporary work that links grief, healing, textiles, and design, and thereby emphasizes the value of sharing space for quiet creation and community among those who have experienced grief similar to my own, allowing room for the unfinished and imperfect, and expanding the materials and techniques we think of as graphic design.
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MATERIAL AS MYSTERY
OLIVIA SCHNEIDER
Material is ubiquitous. It’s everywhere and it’s everything, almost as if the word has become meaningless. The kind of material that I’ve explored in this thesis is the kind with a magical essence, charged with human touch, presence, and mystery—the kind that stirs curiosity, creates questions, and encourages us to keep seeking.
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FACING INWARD
KERI DENNISON-LEIDECKER
Artists and designers on the introvert spectrum are often misrepresented and misunderstood. This experience begins during an introvert’s formative academic years, continues through their career journey, and is also reflected in their practice.
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DISCOVERING DELOACH
MONY NATION
This thesis has been the medicine that has broken down and will continually break down the phlegm that obstructed the life-giving oxygen needed for me to breathe. This work has stretched and pulled me in many directions. I wanted to know my roots. I wanted to know how far I could travel into the archives. I wanted to know if I could do something as simple as locate my ancestors’ names beyond the second generation. Within this wading, I have learned many things about the exploration of lineage and documentation. This synthesis has spoken to the slivers of hope and the gaping holes in the history of America’s true builders. It is a work that speaks about my experience during this discovery and expresses it through the visuals as I attempted to fill the gaps of my familial past.
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CONTROL
CHRISTOPHER SWIFT
Reconsidering the designer as one among many in a creative and collaborative network of active participants full of agency and potential.
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IGNITE DESIGNERS
JEANNIE GUSS
Imagine a world that celebrates our differences, tears down walls, welcomes outsiders, and stimulates collaborative encouragement—this is the revolution—this is Ignite Designers.
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DESIGN FROM DESPAIR
JASMINE PLATT
“This ain’t a scene, it’s a goddamn arms race.”
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