Make My Type

A design project that tasked us to choose a quote from a designer and design a poster that further highlighted the concept through visual communication.

For this brief, I chose the quote, “My work is play. And I play when I design” – Paula Sher. This interested me as it associated design with childhood playfulness that sparked my creativity. I researched Paula Sher and found that the quote was spoken in her TED talk, ‘Great design is serious, not solemn’ where she also says, “the definition of play, number one, was engaging in a childlike activity... and number two was gambling. And I realize I do both when I’m designing.”

This informed the way I approached the poster, using child’s toys to construct the word ‘play’ and using gambling materials such as cards, dicwe, and money to make the next ‘play’. This physically represents Paula Sher’s philosophy by depicting both definitions of the word ‘play’. For the word ‘design’, I constructed the word out of design materials such as pastels, cardboard, and paint. This evokes the sense of the word design by using found materials that are used in design practices. The top down photography of various scattered objects was inspired by the work of Walter Wick in ‘I Spy’ books that I used to read as a child, further evoking that childhood playfulness that I wanted to achieve conceptually.

The top down photography of various scattered objects was inspired by the work of Walter Wick in ‘I Spy’ books that I used to read as a child, further evoking that childhood playfulness that I wanted to achieve conceptually.

Sketch and Draft Process

Final Poster Design

Joe Idosaka 2020