Design conference transmedia strategy
The brief for this project was to design a ‘provocation’ for a Designers Institute of New Zealand (DINZ) one-day conference on a topic of communication design. The provocation needed to cover three touchpoints: Engage, Inform, and Experience).
I chose to design my conference around the theme of legal information design. The aim of this conference was to bring together speakers from across both design and legal professions to discuss how information design principles can be applied to legal information.
The visual rhetoric centered around the idea of "cutting through" the unnecessary complexity (without cutting out the necessary complexity!) and helping non-lawyers understand legal information. To show this, I used the idea of decoder glasses.
To engage my potential audience, I created three posters. At first glance the posters look like simple images of frustrated people and layered legal text. Using decoder glasses, a different message appears on each poster. However, a person might come across the poster before the conference, not having decoder glasses. They might notice the blue ink peeking through the red ink, which is intended to pique their curiosity.
To Inform my audience, I created a brochure that built on the imagery of the posters and developed a visual system to inform attendees about the conference (speakers, timetables, maps etc). The brochure also contained a set of decoder glasses (inserted into the workshop/map page).
Finally, the Experience included the conference venue and an installation. The conference venue placed the imagery from the posters and brochure in and around the venue. Spotlights with red filters would intermittently reveal the hidden messages.
Inside the venue a huge 'terms and conditions' document would be hung. When looking at the document without the decoder glasses, the really technical legal language is printed in red. The rest of the document is in black. When looking through the decoder glasses, the legalese disappears. This simulates a non-lawyer's experience of trying to read and understand legal information.
The image of the woman with head in hands is a royalty free stock photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels.com.
The image of the stressed man is a royalty free stock photo by Ahmad Gunnaivi from Unsplash.com.
The image of the stressed man is a royalty free stock photo by Ahmad Gunnaivi from Unsplash.com.