Ethan Phail

For this project, designers were tasked with creating and curating their own design archive collection and displaying that collection through publication. After carefully curating 72 pieces of design work that I wanted to include in my collection, I realized that they could be evenly separated into 4 categories based on format. These categories included Periodical, Print, Packaging, and Miscellaneous. This gave me the idea to create a collection of four books that could be put together to create a cohesive set.

This project required me and my partner, Ceci Morales, to find a podcast episode from This American Life, transcribe the episode, and use that text as body copy to create a newspaper. Ceci and I went through lots of consideration when choosing our article, but we ultimately settled on the ‘No Coincidence, No Story’ recorded by Sarah Koenig. Ceci and I both focused on collecting assets, creating compositions, text layout and grid structure. Ceci took more control of text setting and systems while I focused on imagery and annotations.

The Recontextualizing a Collection Project challenged designers to display a collection they had already owned, and display that collection through two different user experiences. One needed to be a mobile experience and the other needed to be a desktop site. Designers were issued to explore the collection in two different contexts and show the contextual difference between the two experiences. I have always had a fascination with trinkets and small figurines and have been collecting various them over the past few years. This gave me the idea to focus on my miscellaneous trinket and figurine collection for this project.

The goal of this project was to successfully redesign The Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward Condon. I created an 8” by 10” book with a vibrant green cover, inspired by something an alien would pick. I created this book for people like me who are interested in scientific studies and extraterrestrial life but may fall asleep if they were to have to read an actual scientific document. Essentially, my goal was to create a fun and interesting way to display boring data within the text.

Combining type and image, this project was the accumulation of weeks of research, photography and typographic experimentation. For this project, I was tasked with picking a random object and assigning both connotative and denotative meanings and qualities to said object. I would use this object to photograph various thumbnails which would then be paired with type to create a large poster displaying a grid of various compositions. The item I chose was an old Brownie Hawkeye Camera, which I had found in an antique store near my home.

The goal of this project was to successfully design, or redesign, a film title sequence of the group’s choosing. Groups were tasked with researching themes and underlying meanings of the film. They would use this information to moodboard and create stylesheets to ultimately decide on an aesthetic and style. They would use this aesthetic and style to create a title sequence which felt like it could've effectively been placed within the original film. My partner, Ceci Morales and I, went through many films but eventually settled on Get Out by Jordan Peele. In the production phase of this project, Ceci focused on typography and composition, while I focused on editing techniques, movement, and sound design. Both of us also worked together on asset collection.