Design Hero–Bret Victor

Branding / Booklet / Poster / Motion Graphics / Kiosk UIUX

Project Overview

A multimedia communication design project on the life and work of interaction designer and computer scientist Bret Victor. Through investigation of his design research and philosophy, I curated and branded a poster, zine, animation, and digital experience for others to explore and understand how he creates tools for accessibility and collaboration for all.

Timeline - Spring 2022, 16 Weeks

Tools - Adobe Suite, Maya, Figma

With the majority of assets resourced from Victor’s website from the early 2000s (worrydream.org), I had to spend some thought on visual curation. The website is a great space that uniquely expresses his personality, design philosophy, work process, personal interests, through his sense of humour, but his work does not focus on visual branding for commercial use, which seems contradictory to this project’s purpose. However, I thought it would be interesting to use this as an opportunity for me to integrate my own style and create a brand for his work. Thinking about how this project continues for a whole semester, I figured it would be nice to use this as an opportunity to dive deeper in his work while honing my skills as a communication designer.

Overview

This printed artifact is an 24x36 inch informational poster that introduces a timeline of Bret Victor's career, background, and design philosophy through typography, color and a multi-media graphical elements. I wanted to emphasize the idea of "incubating" through the flower motif because it is a core belief of his work and sets the overall tone of the brand.

Poster

Booklet

The next printed artifact is a 20 page saddle stitched booklet that provides a deeper dive into Bret Victor's Journey as a designer and researcher.

With a more text heavy content to work with, I categorized his work into stages and brought special emphasis on the ups and downs of his life, from being an Engineering student, to working in big tech, to becoming homeless, to now dedicating his energy into non-profit research. I also reached to Bret Victor himself through email and was lucky enough to interview him a couple questions with very detailed and insightful responses. My main goal with this booklet was to conveying these deeply personal events through an appropriate narrative that is cohesive with it's type system, layout, pacing, and imagery.

Animation

Using audio clips from Victor's past lectures, this animation aims to tell an immersive narrative about his goals and ambitions as a designer and researcher. I chose to utilize graphical elements created in different "making tools" to achieve a level of playfulness with what this video will take you.

Kiosk

The last part of this project involves a Figma prototype of a kiosk installation experience that guides the user through who Bret Victor is, what he has done, what quotes has inspired him, and what books does he recommend based on your area of interest. This artifact was a great opportunity to play with larger quantities of data that can be more meaningful to the user when customizable through filters.

Reflections

Bret Victor's projects, along with Alan Kay and Doug Engelbart, has shaped what IoT is today. Familiarizing myself with his work has inspired me to not only understand how the current field of interaction design has come to be, but also encourage me to think about what new ideas a designer can create given the current problems with technology. In terms of the making process, I was inspired by the process of creating with material that is "low resolution", "outdated", "non-designerly", or even "jank". The "look" of things go much more beyond initial reaction, and I hope to explore that more in my future graphic design/brandinf work.