School of Design and Creative Technologies
School of Design and Creative Technologies
A stochastic identity for a new School of Design
A stochastic identity for a new School of Design
A stochastic identity for a new School of Design
A stochastic identity for a new School of Design
A stochastic identity for a new School of Design
The Challenge
In 2017, the School of Design and Creative Technologies was formed within the College of Fine Arts at UT Austin.
The School, with its design and arts and entertainment technologies departments, needed an identity that fit within the overall UT brand guidelines, but better reflected the dynamism of the school and its students.
In 2017, the School of Design and Creative Technologies was formed within the College of Fine Arts at UT Austin.
The School, with its design and arts and entertainment technologies departments needed an identity that fit within the overall UT brand guidelines, but better reflected the dynamism of the school and its students.
In 2017, the School of Design and Creative Technologies was formed within the College of Fine Arts at UT Austin.
The School, with its design and arts and entertainment technologies departments needed an identity that fit within the overall UT brand guidelines, but better reflected the dynamism of the school and its students.
In 2017, the School of Design and Creative Technologies was formed within the College of Fine Arts at UT Austin.
The School, with its design and arts and entertainment technologies departments needed an identity that fit within the overall UT brand guidelines, but better reflected the dynamism of the school and its students.
In 2017, the School of Design and Creative Technologies was formed within the College of Fine Arts at UT Austin.
The School, with its design and arts and entertainment technologies departments needed an identity that fit within the overall UT brand guidelines, but better reflected the dynamism of the school and its students.
My Role
Freelance designer
+ identity concept thru development
+ brand guidelines
+ web app programming (p5.js)
Context
When ordinary tools don’t work, create your own
To communicate the diversity, energy, and breadth of SDCT’s curriculum, faculty, and students, a system of over 200 fonts called Two Type by MuirMcNeil was used. However, the typeface was extraordinarily cumbersome to design because of the “list” interaction paradigm of conventional design tools.
Taking a cue from the more natural interaction of sliders for variable fonts, a custom web interface was designed in p5.js, which allowed for scrubbing through fonts more quickly and intuitively.
All of the fonts were listed within an array to which the value of the slider position was connected to. The random function simply selects a random array value, and therefore, a random font to be displayed: an interaction model more fitting for something with tens of thousands of possible combinations.
Design
Using randomness and curation as a design method
The real power of the tool we created was the ability to select a random combination of fonts for all font layers with a single click of a button. This 100X the speed of production, along with the surprising figure/ground combinations generated, allowing for a focus on deciding what was interesting rather than spending time creating it.
Of course, the sliders could still be used to craft the designs as not every combination is readily successful.
Completing the look: integrating design tools and expanding the design language
Once the typographic composition is set, an image can be exported from the web app, and images and/or other design elements can be placed within the layout using a shared library to finish the design.
The use of Two Type, with its monospaced design used in black and white, was too rigid and mechanical on its own. To add movement to the layouts, the identity incorporates an arrow motif—its style borrowed from prototyping software like Touch Designer and Figma.
Workflow demo
