Summary
Design a gift for a recipient you signed up for, give it to them. Research on the recipient must be privately conducted, there must be a physical and digital aspect to the gift.
Reflection
Figuring out how to give a personalized gift to a complete stranger, one without any social media to help aid the process.
My gift recipient was the wonderful Rhys Gruebel, a wonderful man studying visual communications to receive his MFA. Information on him was very difficult to find as in the short conversation we had, I was informed he had no social media any longer for me to venture through and find out more about him. Fortunatley, the Department of Design at OSU had a recorded interview of Rhys that I used to base most of my gift off of. The interview gave me just what I needed to further my understanding of my recipient and design something for him that could be very meaningful.
Visual storytelling, visual communications, sustainability, and Marcel Marceau’s Conventions of Character. How they all tied together to create Rhys’ gift.
The first thing I learned from the interview with Rhys Gruebel is that he is a visual communications MFA with a child. This immediately brought a few ideas to my mind, most specifically something to do with figurines or action figures, something that he could admire as well as something his young child could play with. A statuette to look at and a toy to play with. I wanted these figures to be communicative and unspoken, a staple of visual communications.
The second thing I learned from the interview was that Rhys was a huge fan of “storytelling through design”, and this set in stone my gift idea. What better way to incorporate both visual communication and storytelling through design than pantomime? Specifically, Marcel Marceau (a Jewish-French actor and mime) and his sixteen Conventions of Character, a set of human poses locked into a certain form that reflects a specific emotion, these sixteen emotions being the toolbox to pick from to create a performance that could tell any story.
Finally, the last thing I learned from the interview with my recipient was his passion for sustainability, recycling, and the environmental future for America. Keeping this in mind, I created my project entirely out of reused materials or materials that were about to be thrown away. Nothing was bought, nothing was ordered or created just for this, everything was repurposed or saved from the trash, giving it a new life in the form of an entirely reused-material gift.
The figurines were made of leftover clay I had, painted by leftover paints I had laying around. Each figure is situated on a two-inch-diameter circle for balance as well as comfortable placement within the giftbox. The giftbox itself being a functioning French style theatre (made of reused chipboard and an old pillowcase for the curtain) showing off four figures in front of a working ascending and lowering curtain that can reveal the rest of the figures. The intention of the gift was to be able to rearrange and play with the figures, telling stories through poses and maybe even recreating them for fun.
The digital element – a personalized site of explanation and exploration.
Rhys’ Personal Site of Context
The digital aspect of the gift was accessed via a QR code pasted on the back of the theatre giftbox. It linked to a site that had a page explaining some background to Rhys initially and inviting him in to learn about the figures. On the other pages of the site, you are able to learn about Marcel Marceau’s sixteen Conventions of Character, The Sorrowful Figures, The Hopeful Figures, and The Ignorant Figures. Every figure is organied as the original Conventions of Character are, but each figure is accompanied by a descriptive text explaining their purpose, weight, and meaning.