thinking inside the box
This is an information design piece that uses physical objects to represent the components of a website, hillmancurtis.com.
It was completed at Carnegie Mellon University for the class Graduate Design Studio 1.
The complete set of boxes representing the website.
We were each given an artifact (book, movie, website, etc.) and needed to communicate the structure and content of our artifact in the form of a poster, movie or interactive piece. My artifact was the website hillmancurtis.com and I chose to represent it, somewhat unconventionally, with boxes and other physical objects that I designed and made.
I hand-made each element of the design.
So often, interaction design is only associated with digital works, but I tend to extend the definition to include physical objects and interactions as well. That was part of my message in choosing to represent a website with boxes.
The time and effort put towards making all the boxes and objects added to the difficulty of this project, but I enjoyed the process and feel that much can be gained from the act of actually making things.
Each film found on the site was represented by a small puzzle of a movie still.
The hierarchy of the site is represented by the nesting of boxes. The largest box houses smaller boxes which represent sub-sections of the main site, and in turn contain even smaller boxes that represent further sub-sections.
Hillman Curtis is a design firm that produces short films and site designs. I attempted to find a physical analogue for each part of the website. Each film is represented by a small puzzle (like a film, users would need to engage with it over time and piece together the meaning for themselves). Site designs are represented by small triptychs that mirror layouts found on the website. Products in the "Store" section are represented by minature versions of items for sale, such as t-shirts and books.