Rebranding of Oxegen, an iconic old Irish music festival.
Every year, creative studio Yummycolours runs a project called Concept of the Year where they identify a conceptual theme for the year ahead and collaborate with a variety of creators to share different perspectives on that theme. There are no rules, there’s just the concept, and participants are simply encouraged to be creative.
So far, the project has been run in 2021 and 2022. The results have been amazing and you can expect next year’s results to be amazing too.
In March 2021, I took an excellent course at Harbour Space university called Designing Brand Experiences. The course was delivered by Yummycolours’ Co-founder, Diego Marini, who afterwards invited all the students in the class to participate in CoY 2022. Motivated by CoY’s intention to serve as inspiration for creation, I participated in CoY 2022, and am excited to also feature in CoY 2023.
I love the “concept” of Concept of the Year. Its open-ended-ness makes it a great opportunity to practice whatever skills I’m working on at the time. The lack of limits or boundaries can be paralysing, so to really overcome the paralysis in a meaningful way, you need to dive deep into consideration of the concept. Thankfully, Yummycolours spends a lot of time and energy coming up with intriguing concepts that are super interesting to think about and explore.
Skills practiced:
Concepting & ideation
Webflow development
UI design
UX design
Interaction design
User testing
In March 2019 I started keeping a daily journal and I haven't missed a day since. Each month I read through, take notes on, and summarise the the previous month’s entries. It has been a fascinating exploration of the mind and a powerful way to catch myself being irrational, excitable, bias, caught up, emotional…being human.
Because I make a point to read back over my daily journal entries, I often write notes to a future version of me. I remind myself of mistakes I made in order not to make them again and I emphasise habits and behaviours that work well for me in order to encourage myself to persist with them.
Another habit I’ve adopted that has had life changing impact on me is regular practice of meditation. Since beginning this practice, I’m astounded by how little of my time is spent being in the present moment and how much of is spent thinking about the past or the future. All of this created a basis on which I built my project for 2023’s concept: Dear Future.
For me, the words “Dear Future” are the beginning of a change for the better.
I think that the most important quality that distinguishes the future from the past or the present is its capacity to change. For the past or the present, it’s too late for change. Since the present moment is normally preoccupied (ironically with thoughts of the past or the future), I interpret “Dear Future” to be the opening words of a letter from The Past which contains further words of wisdom, collected from experience.
This project takes the form of a website, designed to reflect our tendency to be lost in thought. It doesn’t come naturally to us to pause and be present. Visitors to the site are challenged to somehow see through a stream of distracting thoughts in order to access a message from The Past to The Future. Built into the site, there is a simple way to see through these compulsive thoughts which then represents taking a moment to be present.
The general concept:
I think that the most important quality that distinguishes the future from the past or the present is its capacity to change. For the past or the present, it’s too late for change. Since the present moment is normally preoccupied (ironically with thoughts of the past or the future), I interpret “Dear Future” to be the opening words of a letter from The Past which contains further words of wisdom, collected from experience.
The general design:
This project takes the form of a website, designed to reflect our tendency to be lost in thought. It doesn’t come naturally to us to pause and be present. Visitors to the site are challenged to somehow see through a stream of distracting thoughts in order to access a message from The Past to The Future. Built into the site, there is a simple way to see through these compulsive thoughts which then represents taking a moment to be present.
If you haven't already checked out the site but you would like to, try it now before I spoil the experience by giving it all away.
The letter concept:
Because of all of its experience, The Past is a body of wisdom, but it’s too late for it to use this wisdom to make any meaningful change. So, it decided to write to the Future to inform it of its recent discovery of a 3rd state of time, The Present moment, and to advise The Future to pay more attention to it.
Dear Future,
I’ve been trying to reach you. It’s chaotic in here so it can be difficult to get through. I need your help with something, but I have to keep this short because I don’t have much time.
Actually, that’s what I want to talk about; time, and how we’ve been spending it. I’ve started to realise that you and I are taking up too much time in the spotlight.
Think about it, I’m already gone, and you’re not here yet.
So what’s left? Well, I recently discovered that there is a present moment in here too, and it is the only one of us that is able to enjoy this bright corner of the universe.
I know it’s not easy but please, I want you to pay more attention to the present. It’s in the best interest of all of us.
Yours sincerely,
The Past.
The letter design:
Because accessing the letter from the past represents being present, it was important to me that it was visually super clean without any noise. So, the letter is positioned centrally on a white background, with plenty of surrounding breathing space. Initially, because this project was inspired by my own journalling, I wanted the letter to use a cursive font. However, the cursive fonts that I recognised my own handwriting in most also compromised legibility in the user testing. So, I decided to choose a mono typeface instead, Inconsolata, which is super clean and also preserves a sense of both the past and the physical world because of the association of mono typefaces with the original typewriters.
The pop-ups concept:
Unfortunately, in order for the letter from The Past to get to The Future, it must get through the persistent stream of distracting thoughts, represented by pop-up windows, which typically preoccupy The Present. Their purpose is to distract the user from the task at hand; accessing the message from The Past. Although their content is meaningless (or is it?) I discovered a way to create meaning in their arrangement. I noticed that their teal green title bar could be used to create interesting patterns. I decided to take the opportunity to include an additional nugget of valuable advice by arranging them to ultimately spell the words LET GO.
The pop-ups design:
I’ve heard before the use of the analogy of thoughts as those annoying pop-up windows that were especially annoying in the earlier days windows computers. So, I used an old-school design of the pop-up window and classic Arial, a font I would typically avoid due to its over-use, to host these deliberately stressful and distracting thoughts .
The eye concept:
The eye in the centre of the screen represents the focus attention. By following the cursor, the eye is looking at or focussing on the same thing as the site visitor; probably scrambling around trying helplessly to close the annoying thoughts. Should the visitor manage to not be distracted by the pop-ups for a moment, they might notice that by centring themselves (hovering over the eye’s pupil in the centre of the screen) they are able to see past the stream of annoying thoughts and, ironically, LET GO.
The eye design:
I knew that in order to build an eye that could move and follow the cursor, it needed to consist of separate parts. Because the eye in ways represents the self and is linked to the present moment, I wanted the parts to look more organic than geometric. So, I drew lots of tiny “parts” of eyes (which can be seen in the sketches above if you look carefully), converted them to vector using the Adobe Capture app, and chose the combination of parts that I liked most.
Why the extra help?
It’s not important to me that every visitor to the site manages to overcome the urge to give up and just close the browser window. In fact, for me the idea that only some people have the curiosity and patience to unpack the layers of thought that have gone into the site is reflective of the minority of people who ever actually recognise that we are all just a continuous stream of distracting thoughts which requires a degree of focus to penetrate. However, I do want to help out those who are at least curious enough to click the WTF? button in the top right corner of the screen.
Designing the extra help:
The WTF? button opens a window that contains a little background information about the project as well as some hints and prompts about the site’s intentions and how to engage with it. The design is simple and non-distracting, but having conducted some user-testing on the site, I learned that I needed to at least draw a little more attention to it by emphasising the button in a black box. Also, the use of the copy “WTF?” is more incising that the original “What is this?” copy I’d chosen.
It was so much fun working on this project and designing an experience simply for the sake of an experience, with no business incentives or client demands. It was satisfying to practice my recently acquired skills of building websites on Webflow with this super simple site.
The user testing taught me a lot, and resulted in me making a lot of small changes to improve the experience. I learned that people don’t read content, at least not properly. Let’s face it, I bet you’re one of the only people who has ever actually read this line apart from me.
In this case it works because I’m happy with how the friction built into the experience resembles the difficulties we face with being present in real life. However, it only works because nothing is at stake. It’s purely conceptual. In another situation it would be vital to find a solution that ensures that the user is on-board and comfortable throughout the experience.
Overall, I think the biggest take-away from this project was how much fun it was to use a website as a medium for creative expression. I’m curious to continue to collect skills that will equip me to be even more creative as I continue to use this medium going forward.
Skills practiced:
Concepting & ideation
Webflow development
UI design
UX design
Interaction design
User testing
In March 2019 I started a project that I didn’t expect would last until now, but it has, and it’s had a huge impact on my life. I started keeping a daily journal. Each month I read through, take notes on, and summarise the the previous month’s entries. It has been a fascinating exploration of the mind and a powerful way to catch myself being irrational, bias, caught up, emotional…being human.
Because I make a point to read back over my daily journal entries, I often write notes to a future version of me. I remind myself of mistakes I made in order not to make them again and I emphasise habits and behaviours that work well for me in order to encourage myself to persist with them.
Another habit I’ve adopted that has had life changing impact on me is regular practice of meditation. Since beginning this practice, I’m astounded by how little of my time is spent being in the present moment and how much of is spent thinking about the past or the future. All of this created a basis on which I built my project for 2023’s concept: Dear Future.
For me, the words “Dear Future” are the beginning of a change for the better.
I think that the most important quality that distinguishes the future from the past or the present is its capacity to change. For the past or the present, it’s too late for change. Since the present moment is normally preoccupied (ironically with thoughts of the past or the future), I interpret “Dear Future” to be the opening words of a letter from The Past which contains further words of wisdom, collected from experience.
This project takes the form of a website, designed to reflect our tendency to be lost in thought. It doesn’t come naturally to us to pause and be present. Visitors to the site are challenged to somehow see through a stream of distracting thoughts in order to access a message from The Past to The Future. Built into the site, there is a simple way to see through these compulsive thoughts which then represents taking a moment to be present.
The general concept:
I think that the most important quality that distinguishes the future from the past or the present is its capacity to change. For the past or the present, it’s too late for change. Since the present moment is normally preoccupied (ironically with thoughts of the past or the future), I interpret “Dear Future” to be the opening words of a letter from The Past which contains further words of wisdom, collected from experience.
The general design:
This project takes the form of a website, designed to reflect our tendency to be lost in thought. It doesn’t come naturally to us to pause and be present. Visitors to the site are challenged to somehow see through a stream of distracting thoughts in order to access a message from The Past to The Future. Built into the site, there is a simple way to see through these compulsive thoughts which then represents taking a moment to be present.
If you haven't already checked out the site but you would like to, try it now before I spoil the experience by giving it all away.
The letter concept:
Because of all of its experience, The Past is a body of wisdom, but it’s too late for it to use this wisdom to make any meaningful change. So, it decided to write to the Future to inform it of its recent discovery of a 3rd state of time, The Present moment, and to advise The Future to pay more attention to it.
Dear Future,
I’ve been trying to reach you. It’s chaotic in here so it can be difficult to get through. Recently I made a huge discovery but, in order to embrace it, I need your help. I have to keep this short because I don’t have much time.
Actually, that’s what I want to talk about; time, and how we’ve been spending it.I’ve started to realise that you and I are taking up too much time in the spotlight.
Think about it, I’m already gone, and you’re not here yet. So what’s left? Well, that’s what I discovered: There is a present moment in here too, and it is the only one of us that is able to enjoy this bright corner of the universe.
I know it’s not easy but please, I want you to pay more attention to the present. It’s in the best interest of all of us.
Yours sincerely,
The Past.
The letter design:
Because accessing the letter from the past represents being present, it was important to me that it was visually super clean without any noise. So, the letter is positioned centrally on a white background, with plenty of surrounding breathing space. Initially, because this project was inspired by my own journalling, I wanted the letter to be written in scripted font. However, the only scripted fonts that I could find that I related to somehow also compromised legibility, so instead I decided to choose a mono typeface, Inconsolata, which is super clean and but for me also preserves a sense of the physical world because of my associate of mono typefaces with the original typewriters.
The pop-ups concept:
Unfortunately, in order for the letter from The Past to get to The Future, it must get through the persistent stream of distracting thoughts, represented by pop-up windows, which typically preoccupy The Present. Their purpose is to distract the user from the task at hand; accessing the message from The Past. Although their content is meaningless (or is it?) I discovered a way to create meaning in their arrangement. I noticed that their teal green title bar could be used to create interesting patterns. I decided to take the opportunity to include an additional nugget of valuable advice by arranging them to ultimately spell the words LET GO.
The pop-ups design:
I’ve heard before the use of the analogy of thoughts as those annoying pop-up windows that were especially annoying in the earlier days windows computers. So, I used an old-school design of the pop-up window and classic Arial font to host these deliberately stressful and distracting thoughts .
The eye concept:
The eye in the centre of the screen represents the focus attention. By following the cursor, the eye is looking at or focussing on the same thing as the site visitor; probably scrambling around trying helplessly to close the annoying thoughts. Should the visitor manage to not be distracted by the pop-ups for a moment, they might notice that by centring themselves (hovering over the eye’s pupil in the centre of the screen) they are able to see past the stream of annoying thoughts and, ironically, LET GO.
The eye design:
I knew that in order to build an eye that could move and follow the cursor, it needed to consist of separate parts. Because the eye in ways represents the self and is linked to the present moment, I wanted the parts to look more organic than geometric. So, I drew lots of tiny “parts” of eyes, converted them to vector using the Adobe Capture app, and chose the combination of parts that I liked most.
Why the extra help?
It’s not important to me that every visitor to the site manages to overcome the urge to give up and just close the browser window. In fact, for me the idea that only some people have the curiosity and patience to unpack the layers of thought that have gone into the site is reflective of the minority of people who ever actually recognise that we are all just a continuous stream of distracting thoughts which requires a degree of focus to penetrate. However, I do want to help out those who are at least curious enough to click the WTF? button in the top right corner of the screen.
Designing the extra help:
The WTF? button opens a window that contains a little background information about the project as well as some hints and prompts about the site’s intentions and how to engage with it. The design is simple and non-distracting, but having conducted some user-testing on the site, I learned that I needed to at least draw a little more attention to it by emphasising the button in a black box. Also, the use of the copy “WTF?” is more incising that the original “What is this?” copy I’d chosen.
It was so much fun working on this project and designing an experience simply for the sake of an experience, with no business incentives or client demands. It was satisfying to practice my recently acquired skills of building websites on Webflow with this super simple site. One thing that I’ve learned from my user testing is that people don’t read content, at least not properly. Let’s face it, I bet you’re one of the only people who has every actually read this line apart from me. In this case, it doesn’t really matter. Firstly because, as I mentioned before, I’m happy with how the friction built into the experience resembles the difficulties we face with being present in real life. Secondly, and more importantly, it doesn’t matter because there are no stakes in this project. It’s purely conceptual. In another situation it would be important to find a solution that ensures that the user is on-board and comfortable throughout the experience.
Overall, I think the biggest take-away from this project was how much fun it was to use a website as a medium for creative expression. I’m curious to continue to collect skills that will equip me to be even more creative as I continue to use this medium going forward.
Skills practiced:
Concepting & ideation
After Effects
Visual design
Sleepwalking as being somewhere in-between
On the one hand, sleepwalking is a state of being somewhere in-between wakefulness and sleep. I wanted to express this state of in-between-ness in this project. I’m in no position to get scientific about the technicalities of what is actually going on when people sleepwalk, so I took a more abstract approach, identifying sleepwalking as an indefinite occurrence during the transition between two definite states: wakefulness and sleep.
Sleepwalking as being nowhere at all
On the other hand, sleepwalking also means being nowhere at all. Yes, sleepwalkers demonstrate qualities of both wakefulness and sleep, but the complexity of their experience leaves so many questions unanswered. It is packed with mystery and the unknown. The lack of consciousness indicates an ironic absence of presence.
As I mentioned earlier, it was after taking Diego Marini’s class at Harbour Space university, that I was introduced to CoY. He openly invited all the students in the class to participate, and it was on one of Barcelona’s beautiful beaches (only a few hundred meters away from the university) that those of use who had committed to participate decided to collaborate for the project. We called ourselves Sons of Beaches.
To understand the concept we came up with, it’s important to know that Yummycolours’ intention with the CoY 2022 projects was to create a deck of cards whereby each card would represent a collaborator’s project. Each week Yummycolours would randomly draw 3 cards to be interpreted together and publish the draw in their weekly newsletter, kind of like how tarot cards work. Since we were a “sub-collaborative” group within a bigger collaborated group of all CoY 2022 participants, and since there would be a weekly draw of random cards, we wanted there to be some connective tissue between all of our projects which would generate intrigue should 2 or more of our cards be drawn together.
Our solution was simple. We each took a letter of the word SLEEPWALKING (some of us took 2 in order to make up the balance), and created a design that somehow resembled our assigned letter while reflecting our individual interpretation of the Sleepwa[l]king concept.
I was responsible for letters A and L.
Under the moonlit beach by their school, a multicultural group of interaction design classmates from Harbour Space University in Barcelona decided to unite their work for the Concept of the Year project. They each took a letter from the keyword in this year’s theme: Sleepwa[l]king, and integrated their dedicated letter into their interpretation of the concept. They’re excited about occasions in which the weekly draw of cards from the overall deck includes two or more cards from their collaborative exercise, implying a connective tissue between the cards submitted from their group and perhaps evoking curiosity for those who don’t know.
Sons of Beaches are:
S - Margherita Giottoli
L - Ciaran Kelly
E - Anna Egorova
E - Robbie Sands
P - Thibault Schegin
W - Mayra Jannette Sanchez
A - Ciaran Kelly
L - Linh Hà
K - Kunal Belamkar
I - Anna Egorova
N - Sonal Srivastava
G - Amir A. Karim
Sleepwalking as being somewhere in-between
This graphic aims to instil a sense of hypnosis and mystery; two themes closely linked to sleepwalking. The infinite staircase in the foreground implies an uncertain presence between two (more tangible) states. There is an absence of presence. While the visual suggests a presence on an infinite staircase, it also suggests an absence from being anywhere in particular.
Sleepwalking as being nowhere at all
Like limbo, sleepwalking exists in a state of in-between-ness. This card captures an awkward moment in the transition between two states. This graphic is a continuous loop between darkness and light. The moments of complete darkness and complete light represent states of sleep and of being awake. The frames in-between represent the ambiguity of sleepwalking; a state of uncertainty that seems to fall in the transition between sleeping and waking.
As I've already mentioned, Yummycolours promised that they would create a deck of cards to represent all the projects that were submitted and carry out a weekly draw of cards to be interpreted by recipients of their newsletter, and that’s exactly what they did. See how my the Sons of Beaches cards turned out below and check out the other great projects on the Sleepwa[l]king project website.
More than anything, this project was an opportunity for me to practice my motion skills on Aftereffects. I cherished the chance to build some grids and mechanical visuals because that’s the kind of thing I love to do and which I get totally lost in. There are a lot of technical considerations to be made in the creation of visuals like those I created, and I’ve always been drawn to such visuals. I was delighted with the results, but in hindsight there is a lot I could have done to improve on my approach to this project. I was way too eager to just jump into After Effects and start building. I didn’t give enough time to the research and ideation, and as a result I feel like my work is lacking in conceptual depth. That said, the extra hours spend fighting with After Effects came with many valuable lessons too.
Skills practiced:
Concepting & ideation
After Effects
Visual design
Sleepwalking as being somewhere in-between
On the one hand, sleepwalking is a state of being somewhere in-between wakefulness and sleep. I wanted to express this state of in-between-ness in this project. I’m in no position to get scientific about the technicalities of what is actually going on when people sleepwalk, so I took a more abstract approach, identifying sleepwalking as an indefinite occurrence during the transition between two definite states: wakefulness and sleep.
Sleepwalking as being nowhere at all
On the other hand, sleepwalking also means being nowhere at all. Yes, sleepwalkers demonstrate qualities of both wakefulness and sleep, but the complexity of their experience leaves so many questions unanswered. It is packed with mystery and the unknown. The lack of consciousness indicates an ironic absence of presence.
As I mentioned earlier, it was after taking Diego Marini’s class at Harbour Space university, that I was introduced to CoY. He openly invited all the students in the class to participate, and it was on one of Barcelona’s beautiful beaches (only a few hundred meters away from the university) that those of use who had committed to participate decided to collaborate for the project. We called ourselves Sons of Beaches.
To understand the concept we came up with, it’s important to know that Yummycolours’ intention with the CoY 2022 projects was to create a deck of cards whereby each card would represent a collaborator’s project. Each week Yummycolours would randomly draw 3 cards to be interpreted together and publish the draw in their weekly newsletter, kind of like how tarot cards work. Since we were a “sub-collaborative” group within a bigger collaborated group of all CoY 2022 participants, and since there would be a weekly draw of random cards, we wanted there to be some connective tissue between all of our projects which would generate intrigue should 2 or more of our cards be drawn together.
Our solution was simple. We each took a letter of the word SLEEPWALKING (some of us took 2 in order to make up the balance), and created a design that somehow resembled our assigned letter while reflecting our individual interpretation of the Sleepwa[l]king concept.
I was responsible for letters A and L.
Under the moonlit beach by their school, a multicultural group of interaction design classmates from Harbour Space University in Barcelona decided to unite their work for the Concept of the Year project. They each took a letter from the keyword in this year’s theme: Sleepwa[l]king, and integrated their dedicated letter into their interpretation of the concept. They’re excited about occasions in which the weekly draw of cards from the overall deck includes two or more cards from their collaborative exercise, implying a connective tissue between the cards submitted from their group and perhaps evoking curiosity for those who don’t know.
Sons of Beaches are:
S - Margherita Giottoli
L - Ciaran Kelly
E - Anna Egorova
E - Robbie Sands
P - Thibault Schegin
W - Mayra Jannette Sanchez
A - Ciaran Kelly
L - Linh Hà
K - Kunal Belamkar
I - Anna Egorova
N - Sonal Srivastava
G - Amir A. Karim
Sleepwalking as being somewhere in-between
This graphic aims to instil a sense of hypnosis and mystery; two themes closely linked to sleepwalking.The infinite staircase in the foreground implies an uncertain presence between two (more tangible) states. There is an absence of presence. While the visual suggests a presence on an infinite staircase, it also suggests an absence from being anywhere in particular.
Sleepwalking as being nowhere at all
Like limbo, sleepwalking exists in a state of in-between-ness. This card captures an awkward moment in the transition between two states. This graphic is a continuous loop between darkness and light. The moments of complete darkness and complete light represent states of sleep and of being awake. The frames in-between represent the ambiguity of sleepwalking; a state of uncertainty that seems to fall in the transition between sleeping and waking.
As I mentioned above, Yummycolours promised that they would create a deck of cards to represent all the projects that were submitted and carry out a weekly draw of cards to be interpreted by recipients of their newsletter, and that’s exactly what they did. See how my the Sons of Beaches cards turned out below and check out the other great projects on the Sleepwa[l]king project website.
More than anything, this project was an opportunity for me to practice my motion skills on Aftereffects. I cherished the chance to build some grids and mechanical visuals because that’s the kind of thing I love to do and which I get totally lost in. There are a lot of technical considerations to be made in the creation of visuals like those I created, and I’ve always been drawn to such visuals. I was delighted with the results, but in hindsight there is a lot I could have done to improve on my approach to this project. I was way too eager to just jump into After Effects and start building. I didn’t give enough time to the research and ideation, and as a result I feel like my work is lacking in conceptual depth. That said, the extra hours spend fighting with After Effects came with many valuable lessons too.
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