Through my initial experimentation with questionnaires and gaining a glimpse into people’s lives, I was able to identify a direction for my work. This direction developed further through my engagement with Matei Bejenaru’s work and his own exploration of illegal immigration and the position of the immigrant as a mere transported individual, without addressing the deeper intricacy of experiencing moving away from one’s own country for a better life.
What this engagement offered me was the opportunity to think about the intricacies and differences between immigration and being an immigrant. Immigration is a process, while being an immigrant is an identity that continues long after the process itself has ended.
Visually and conceptually, I struggled to bring together the ideas I was exploring. I found it challenging to connect my intention of engaging both an English and a Romanian audience, as each held very different perspectives on what it means to be a Romanian immigrant. Through discussions, I learned that many people actually perceive being a Romanian immigrant in ways that are closer to Western European experiences, in that form, many perceive that the Romanian immigrant has experienced a linear, direct experience.
While I acknowledge that as Europeans we benefit from certain privileges, such as the ability to come to this country legally, this does not erase the strong preconceptions that exist about Romanians. These stereotypes can significantly shape how we experience the world and particularly how the world sees us.
The most important result of this triangulation has been the realisation that I need to acknowledge the difference in audiences. I must decide whether I want my work to resonate with Romanians themselves or to explain the Romanian experience to outsiders. What I initially thought could be achieved within a single project may, in fact, need to be developed as two separate pieces of work.
Moving forward, I want to recognise that the stories I am gathering are not just quotations or data points. They represent my active listening, editing, and compiling of people’s lived experiences. As a designer and representative of this work, I carry the challenge and responsibility of creating a piece that engages audiences meaningfully and respectfully.
In the next stage, I aim to incorporate more of my own language and Romanian heritage into the project. I also plan to engage more directly with people through interviews. While the questionnaires were a valuable way to gather general insights, I now want to move toward more personal and in-depth forms of storytelling.
Ultimately, I see this project as an evolving conversation between identity, perception, and representation. It is not only about presenting Romanian voices but also about questioning how these voices are received, framed, and interpreted in different cultural contexts. By allowing the work to remain open and responsive, I hope to create space for dialogue rather than resolution, and to let the stories shape the form the project eventually takes.
My work for this year aims to explore a closer more personal understanding of immigrant experience as expressed and represented by fellow Romanian immigrants. The majority of the content for this project comes through the use of a questionnaire which was distributed through Romanian immigrant groups and by word of mouth through family and friends. What my project does not aim to do is to interrogate the people on the way that they immigrated to this country nor on their experience through bureaucracy or the process of moving from a country to another on a purely physical basis. Instead my biggest aim was to humanize and highlight what it feels like to be away from home and while I do not deny that this experience is universal for most immigrants. I wanted to address it from the perspective of a group of people that have a similar beginning to me.
The reference chosen is Travel Guide (2005-2007) by Matei Bejenaru. This project is an analytical look at the process of immigration and illegal immigration within the mid 2000’s, presenting both an installation and a booklet that viewers can walk away with. The work covers the process of illegally immigrating from Romania to the UK and is visually represented in the format similar to that of transport for London’s. Bejenaru aims to highlight how many steps the Romanian immigrant has to take before entering the UK and the risks taken on their journey to a better life. This installation was created before Romania became part of the EU, so it was at a point when crossing the border from Romania to Hungary was precarious and risky if not in possession of the correct paperwork.
This was a time where, due to the fairly recent fall of communism, many Romanians were seeking a better life for themselves outside of the country. The document that Bejenaru provides begins by stating that: “If you want to go to Great Britain or Ireland and you have no chance of getting a Visa from the Bucharest embassies [sic] of these countries, you must carefully size up the chances you take when you decide to cross the border without having the legal papers.” The document itself acts as a step-by-step guide and explains in depth what routes to take, what options you have and what risks you are taking by entering the country. The reference itself represented a time in history where people felt the need to escape the country but were unable to go through the legal channels to do so. This illegal process of immigration has diminished as people are able to enter the country legally, though this does not erase the fact that this is a reality for many Romanians seeking a better life.
Presently, work about Romanian immigration is scarce and oftentimes does not really delve into the emotional experience itself. It is important to me therefore to explain why the reference in question has been chosen. Many may identify the fact both projects explore immigration and state that the reference and my project are not dissimilar. Due to this misunderstanding of the nature of my work they believe that because both cover immigration they are therefore the same. While I do not deny the similarity in root of both projects, their approaches are different. I aim to make people understand that immigration and an immigrant are different things, even if they are intrinsically related.
In contrast to my work, Bejenaru’s project is technical, detail oriented and does not use the immigrant’s emotions or experiences as necessarily the main focus of his work. The immigrant is anonymous, it could be you, the reader or a nameless third party; Instead of the main focus of this work being illegal immigration and the process of it, the subject of crossing borders is not necessarily the focus, rather leaving this event behind in lieu of how the identity of immigrant can impact people.
Unlike Travel Guide, which provides its audience with a structured, almost bureaucratic depiction of migration routes, my project privileges the unstructured, the intimate, and the subjective. The anonymity that defines Bejenaru’s immigrants is replaced here by a multiplicity of voices that resist reduction to data or procedure. Rather than mapping borders, my work maps feelings. Though also not specifically identifying my participants by name, my work seeks to create a well rounded representation of who they are, what they enjoy and what they want you, the reader, to take away.
Through visual representations of my inquiry, my project takes a more introspective and emotional approach to the subject of Romanian immigrants’ experiences and their feelings regarding their current life. While Bejenaru’s Travel Guide operates in the realm of documentation and social commentary, my work situates itself in the affective and interpersonal. I am interested in how displacement manifests not only as a geographical or legal transition but as a deeply personal reconfiguration of self. By collecting testimonies through a questionnaire circulated among Romanian immigrants, I aim to construct a collective emotional landscape: one that captures the nuances of longing, adaptation, and nostalgia that accompany life away from home. These answers will aid in moving forward with the physical development of this project, becoming the source and representation of the inquiry I am hoping to address.
In conclusion, my project seeks to bridge the gap between the historical and emotional dimensions of Romanian immigration, offering a counterpoint to Matei Bejenaru’s Travel Guide by shifting the focus from procedure to personal experience. While his work captures a specific historical moment marked by risk, uncertainty, and the pursuit of opportunity, my project captures what follows: the quieter, ongoing experience of living elsewhere and carrying home within. It is less about the act of crossing a border and more about what happens after, when one begins to inhabit a new language, culture, and rhythm of life. Through the voices gathered in my questionnaire, I hope to present an image of Romanian immigrants not defined by statistics or legality, but by sentiment, memory, and resilience. These narratives reveal the complexity of belonging, how it can stretch across geographies, linger in language, and persist through loss. Ultimately, my work invites reflection on what it means to exist between places, to be both here and there, and to find meaning in that in-between space. In doing so, it extends the conversation that Bejenaru began, transforming it from a story of movement into a meditation on emotion, connection, and identity.
For this portion of the project, I wanted to go a different direction and what I’ve previously done with my unit 2 development. Instead of making all of my work be about me and about my own experiences as a remaining immigrant I instead turned out words and wanted to hear what other peoples experiences had been like. I first created this questionnaire as a way to gather small information about what people miss from home about what they miss from Romania and about themselves to some degree.
The questionnaire was first shared to my friends who answered the first few questions themselves and then it was further sent to other Romanians in our circle of friends and then through Facebook groups. The questionnaire was not an identifying questionnaire it did not ask the people to give their name or their contact instead it only asked them how long ago they came to the UK if they considered UK their home and a series of questions about whether they miss Romania or whether they consider UK as for their home.
What I did for the next few weeks was wait for the replies and then I compiled them in a way that I found to make sense, which was through a table. That way I was actually able to kind of track and realise what these answers are saying about the people and about their own experiences.
I was surprised to see that a lot of people that answered were actually people who came to the UK quite a while ago, almost a decade or around a decade ago, which was surprisingly not the audience that I expected to draw in. I was also surprised to see that most of the answers actually had quite a similar tone. A lot of people were missing Romania as a place of home, they were missing Romania as a place where family is and they were missing items from Romania that they technically could source in the UK but a lot of people argued that they felt differently in the UK (food, beauty products, general items).
It was also quite interesting that the questions that I had at the end regarding Romania, which was when you think about our origin country what comes to mind and how would you describe it from your perspective actually brought about very similar outlooks.
Many people discussed how, when they thought of Romania, they either thought of home or they thought of corruption, which I was very surprised by. While it is true that Romania, as a country, does have quite a bit of governmental corruption and that the citizens are acutely aware of it, it was still surprising to see that people found it to be their knee-jerk reaction or their immediate response when asked about Romania.
Similarly, when people are asked to describe Romania, they once again fall on the description of “corrupt.” They focus on the idea and the fact that Romania, while a beautiful country, is unlivable due to its corruption.
This was actually a question where many people mentioned that they would like to return home, that they would like to once more be repatriated and able to be with their families, but that they’re being held back by the corruption of the country. I thought it was quite interesting that many people have immigrated for, arguably, a better life, and while they don’t necessarily all consider the UK their home, it seems they find themselves to be somewhat stuck here in this way.
Taking these answers, I was actually inspired to create some sort of piece that essentially related to what these people had shared with me. What I wanted to do was represent their responses through a piece of design that captured the essence of their answers while also creating a harmonious, aesthetic work.
Based on these answers, I created a small book called Alta Parte / Other Piece, which is a small compilation of things that people spoke about in their questionnaires. The cover features beautiful places in Romania, and inside are people’s setbacks and hang-ups about coming back home.
The book includes the answers of several people, some mentioned that they cannot return home due to family in the UK or because of corruption, while others expressed disillusionment with the idea of returning to a country that is still arguably broken, even though the revolution that was supposed to fix this happened all the way back in 1989.
The cover includes typography made up of words that were commonly mentioned in the questionnaire, with the largest ones being those that appeared most often. It also makes a clear separation between the words in Romanian and those in English, transitioning from a more traditional, “local” font that one might find back home to a sleeker, more “English” typeface.
For my Positions through dialoguing, my initial aims were blurred. Unsure of where my work was heading, I felt the need to have someone take my hand and lead me to the direction they thought would prove more academic or culturally significant.
My struggle lay in comprehending and elevating my own practice, which at times felt confined to a narrow set of recurring skills. Recognizing this, I decided that my first dialogue should be with someone whose approach, at least on the surface, contrasted with my own. My intention was to encounter new perspectives that could reinvigorate my thinking and open alternative pathways for my work.
Naturally nervous about the possibility of having a chat with a complete stranger about a project that by that point was reaching a culmination of intimate feelings, I arrived at Laura Knight’s work. In my own perception it seemed analytical, research based, qualities seemingly at odds with the way I had been processing and producing material in recent months. In our talk, I was surprised to find that a lot of my work seemed to ring a familiar bell, and the conversation that followed helped me quite a bit.
Leading in with a brief introduction of my own experiences, we discussed my reticence to expose so much of myself to an audience. To my surprise, I was encouraged to lead in a new direction: Laura encouraged me instead to reframe this vulnerability as a point of connection by engaging directly with peers who had undergone similar experiences, specifically the process of immigrating from Romania to the UK. This seemed like the most logical direction, which somehow my mind had completely avoided. In discussing this we explored the possibility of engaging with my friends and taking their own life stories to create something out of. Coming out of this discussion, I felt like I had a renewed look at the direction I wanted to take the work.
My following dialogue came a couple of months later, this time I reached out to somebody opposite of a stranger. My friend Liesl Klus, who is working as a Designer at Penguin. Due to our distance, our dialogue took place over the internet and was, somehow, just as intimidating as my talk with Laura Knight. In presenting my work to Liesl, I was asking for earnest and honest feedback regarding my work, which she delivered. Following my mention of Laura’s previous suggestion regarding expanding my ‘pool’ of experiences, which Liesl agreed with, I discussed the possiblity of the output somehow reflecting the process. We discussed the work I had created so far and my own intentions for this project. Liesl’s suggestions were to continue in the direction I was aiming, which was to explore more forms of print and experiment with creating something physical and tangible from this project.
This exchange affirmed an essential aspect of my practice: whatever form the work ultimately takes, it must carry a sense of physicality. Moreover, Liesl’s feedback offered concrete strategies for expanding and articulating the project’s thematic concerns. Together, these dialogues not only provided direction but also clarified the relationship between my personal experience, my chosen medium, and the broader conversations I hope to enter.
Zarina’s Home Is a Foreign Place is a series of 36 woodcut prints combining minimalist visuals with Urdu words to evoke memory, displacement, and belonging. Drawing on her personal history and global movements, the series weaves cultural, linguistic, and material references into a poignant meditation on home and identity. This selection of woodcuts inspired me to consider how graphic shapes can relate and represent feelings of displacement and of longing towards a home that never was, emphasizing that abstraction and simplicity can carry profound meaning. Her representations inspired my choice in my iterations to apply graphic romanian-inspired symbols to the original prints to create the layered effects.
Negotiated Identities/Saints and Tears is a 2015 international group exhibition held at Space One Eleven in Birmingham, Alabama, featuring artists from the American Deep South and Romania. The exhibition explores how personal and collective identities are shaped by political histories, cultural memory, and religious symbolism. Romanian artists, navigating post-communist realities, and American artists from the Deep South, confronting their own socio-political landscapes, engage in a visual dialogue. Through collaborative works, the exhibition delves into themes of autonomy, privacy, and the enduring impact of authoritarian regimes, highlighting the universal quest for self-definition amid complex historical contexts. Within this exhibition I was struck by the work of Karen Graffeo who’s use of graphic symbols overlaid on old romanian imagery inspired my subsequent iterations in this project.
3. Benjamin, W. (1969) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, pp. 1–26. (First published in 1935).
The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web.
In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin argues that mass reproduction technologies, like photography and film, strip art of its “aura”—its uniqueness and presence in time and space. This shift transforms how art is experienced, detaching it from tradition and ritual. While reproduction democratizes access, it also opens art to political manipulation. Benjamin explores how these changes reflect broader shifts in perception, politics, and cultural production. While this choice approaches more broader subject matter, I still found it fundamental in guiding my reflection upon the medium I have chosen. While not entirely political, my piece relies on the handmade aspect of it’s production to reflect and represent my feelings.
A talk, song, scarf, flag, web meme, website, installation or publication may all be valid ways to pose a critique
The essay Critical Graphic Design from Modes of Criticism challenges my understanding of how personal experiences can be represented through design by questioning the neutrality and function of graphic design itself. It argues that design is never apolitical—that it always communicates values, ideologies, and power structures, whether intentionally or not. This perspective pushes me to think more critically about how I frame my own life experiences. It’s not just about telling a story visually, but about examining what assumptions or norms my design choices reinforce or resist. Rather than aiming solely for aesthetic appeal or clarity, this essay encourages me to consider how my work can engage with broader cultural, social, or political contexts. It opens up space for more self-aware, reflexive design practices that don’t just represent life, but question how and why it’s being represented.
Fowler does not provide a detailed explanation for the pieces created; rather, they serve as an exercise in lino printing. The work is particularly notable for its blend of lino and woodblock printing, combined with the use of different coloured inks. It is an experiment in layering ink, creating a visual effect reminiscent of decoupage. This approach inspired my own work, giving me the idea to layer symbols over my initial designs. While I originally intended to replicate the feeling of these overlaid, somewhat chaotic images, I realized that such complexity could make the compositions too busy and difficult to keep fast and light-footed, which was essential for my 100 iterations.
6. Ford, L. O. (2011) Savage Messiah. London: Verso Books.
Savage Messiah by Laura Oldfield Ford is a zine-style, psychogeographic exploration of post-industrial London. Blending collage, drawing, and text, the work captures the emotional residue of urban decay, gentrification, and working-class displacement. It documents forgotten spaces and resistances, channeling punk aesthetics and radical politics. Through layered visuals and fragmented narratives, Ford evokes both rage and nostalgia, offering a haunting portrait of a city transformed by neoliberalism and erased histories. Inspired by Ford’s expression of individuality, I wanted to also use text and words at points to establish my feelings in regards to my identity. The layering of her images solidified my desire to add the collage style spin towards my second rounds of iterations.
7. Knisley, L (2007) French Milk. Epigraph Publishing
Lucy Knisley’s French Milk enhances my understanding of how personal experiences can be meaningfully represented to an audience through a balance of intimacy and relatability. Her use of hand-drawn illustrations alongside journal-style writing creates an accessible and emotionally resonant narrative that doesn’t rely on dramatic events but rather on the details of everyday life—meals, conversations, passing thoughts. This approach challenges the idea that personal stories must be exceptional to be shared. Instead, Knisley demonstrates that authenticity and specificity can invite others into your world. For my own work, French Milk encourages me to trust the value of my ordinary experiences and to consider how visual elements, tone, and structure can shape the way an audience connects with my story.
8. Tamaki, M. and Tamaki, J. (2008) Skim. Groundwood Books
Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki deepens my understanding of how complex, layered emotions can be conveyed through the interplay of text and image. The graphic novel captures adolescence in a way that feels both intensely personal and broadly relatable, using visual silence, body language, and sparse dialogue to express what isn’t easily said. This challenges me to think beyond literal storytelling when representing my own life experiences. Skim shows that ambiguity, mood, and fragmented moments can be just as powerful—if not more so—than a straightforward narrative. It encourages me to embrace uncertainty and emotional nuance, and to consider how visual storytelling can communicate what words alone often can’t. It’s a reminder that not everything needs to be explained to be understood.
9. Brătescu, G. (1971) The Working Desk. Geta Brătescu, Bucharest
Geta Brătescu’s The Working Desk enhances my understanding of representing life experiences by highlighting the creative process itself as a form of autobiography. Rather than presenting a polished narrative, Brătescu documents her workspace and the rhythms of her daily practice, turning the act of making into a reflection of self. This challenges the idea that personal storytelling must always result in a finished product. Instead, she positions the everyday—scraps, gestures, routines—as central to self-representation. Her work encourages me to see value in process, imperfection, and repetition as expressive tools. It opens up the possibility of sharing my experiences not only through what I say or show, but through how I work and what I choose to keep visible in that process.
10. Ahmed, S. (2017) Living a Feminist Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
In making feminism a life question, we will be judged as judgmental.
The introduction to Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed enhances my understanding of representing life experiences by validating personal narrative as a form of critical knowledge. Ahmed emphasizes that lived experience—especially the experiences of those navigating systems of oppression—is not separate from theory, but a way of doing theory. This challenges the traditional separation between the personal and the intellectual, reinforcing that telling my story is not just self-expression, but also a political and theoretical act. Her concept of the “feminist killjoy” resonates deeply, encouraging me to embrace discomfort, contradiction, and resistance in how I represent myself. Rather than smoothing over complexity for the sake of clarity or likability, Ahmed gives me permission to center friction and vulnerability. This perspective invites me to see my project not just as a personal account, but as part of a broader feminist practice of making visible what is often ignored or dismissed. It empowers me to resist dominant narratives of coherence and productivity, and to trust in the critical potential of my own lived, felt, and embodied experiences.
11. McLuhan, M. and Fiore, Q., 1967. The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects [PDF]. New York: Bantam Books. Available at: https://archive.org/details/pdfy-vNiFct6b-L5ucJEa (Accessed: 25 May 2025)
Reference one
Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage (1967), produced in collaboration with graphic designer Quentin Fiore, presents the provocative idea that the medium through which information is conveyed is more influential than the content itself. This foundational media theory posits that technological mediums shape human experience and perception, fundamentally altering how individuals understand themselves and the world. Rather than focusing on what a message says, McLuhan urges us to look at the structure and delivery system of the message—how it “massages” our senses and perceptions.
This idea is not only stated in the text but embodied in the book’s design, which becomes an essential part of its argument. Rather than presenting a conventional, linear narrative, The Medium is the Massage is an experimental collage of typography, photography, layout disruptions, and visual juxtapositions. The typography often breaks with tradition—sometimes exploding across pages, other times minimized or curved, demanding that the reader interact with the text in a new way. The images often clash or contrast with the words on the page, creating a dissonance that forces the reader to make connections rather than passively absorb information. These design strategies perform McLuhan’s message: the book itself is a medium that reshapes the reader’s sensory experience.
In terms of communication and graphic design, The Medium is the Massage radically redefines the designer’s role—not simply as a transmitter of content, but as a co-creator of meaning. This work challenges my previous understanding of graphic design as primarily about clarity, order, and aesthetics. Instead, McLuhan and Fiore present design as an active force that constructs reality and perception. Their book rejects the idea that form should be subordinate to function; rather, it shows how form is function when the aim is to awaken audiences to the invisible influence of media.
This insight has significant implications for my own area of interest: representing life experiences to an audience. Before encountering The Medium is the Massage, I often thought about representation in terms of storytelling—what I want to say, what parts of my life feel meaningful or compelling. McLuhan shifts the focus: how I choose to present these stories (the media I use, the structure, the aesthetic choices) might have a greater impact on how audiences engage with and understand them than the stories themselves.
For example, if I’m creating a visual memoir or zine, The Medium is the Massage suggests that the format—folds, pacing, image/text relations, paper quality, and even printing errors—communicates as much as the content. This insight encourages me to think beyond content delivery and towards immersive design strategies. Could the layout of my project mirror the non-linear nature of memory? Could shifts in typography signal emotional or psychological states? Could visual overload or fragmentation be used intentionally to express disorientation or complexity?
Moreover, when considered alongside Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki or French Milk by Lucy Knisley—two personal, illustrated narratives—McLuhan’s ideas amplify the importance of medium specificity. While those works rely heavily on consistent visual language and linear storytelling, The Medium is the Massage explodes the narrative and asks the reader to piece it together. This opens new possibilities for my project: I might, for instance, break from traditional storyboarding and create a patchwork of moments, images, and texts that invite the audience to experience, rather than simply understand, my life events.
Ultimately, McLuhan and Fiore’s work invites me to reconceive my project not just as a story I’m telling but as an environment I’m constructing. If the medium is indeed the message, then I must treat every element—visual, textual, material—not as decoration, but as a tool of expression and transformation. This challenges me to be more intentional, more experimental, and more critical about the ways in which I design my life for others to see.
12. Satrapi, M (2000), Persepolis.
Reference two
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is a graphic memoir that explores the impact of the Iranian Revolution and the subsequent Islamic regime through the eyes of a young girl growing up in Tehran. The key ideas presented in the text include the loss of personal freedom under authoritarian rule, the tension between modernity and tradition, and the struggle for identity in the face of political and cultural upheaval. Satrapi presents a deeply personal and political narrative that critiques repression, celebrates resilience, and highlights the complexities of growing up as a woman in a society marked by war, censorship, and resistance. While her story is compelling, it is through her medium that Satrapi found a way to capture her readers within the richly compelling world of her own childhood.In Leigh Gilmore’s essay Witnessing Persepolis: Comics, Trauma, and Childhood Testimony, she identifies a key reason why Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis resonates so powerfully with readers: the central perspective of a child navigating a world shaped by political violence and upheaval. Gilmore writes, “Persepolis aims not only to teach these readers how to think about the Middle East, broadly, and Iran specifically, but also how to feel. Satrapi’s use of comics is part of this affective strategy, as is her choice of an autobiographical child/adolescent protagonist, whose direct witnessing of adult violence encourages sympathetic readings” (Gilmore, 2011, pp. 157–170). In presenting the Iranian Revolution through the eyes of a young girl, Satrapi invites the reader to encounter the events with a sense of immediacy and emotional vulnerability. The child protagonist, Marji, does not yet possess the filters or political frameworks of an adult; instead, she processes events in a raw, affective manner that mirrors the confusion, fear, and resilience that can characterize a child’s response to trauma.
This choice of narrative voice establishes a crucial bond between the reader and Marji, one built on identification and empathy. As Marji witnesses scenes of injustice, brutality, and loss, the reader too becomes a witness—not in the traditional, detached sense, but through an effective proximity fostered by the graphic novel’s form. The visual medium of comics allows Satrapi to render emotional expression and symbolic imagery with an immediacy that words alone might not achieve. The stark black-and-white illustrations, for instance, underscore the moral and emotional binaries that often shape a child’s understanding of complex realities. These artistic and narrative strategies combine to create a compelling form of testimony, one that does not simply present historical facts but seeks to transmit the emotional truths of lived experience.
Persepolis challenges my existing understanding of graphic and communication design by revealing the medium’s potential to communicate complex emotional and political narratives in ways that go beyond traditional aesthetics or functionality. Previously, I viewed graphic design primarily as a tool for visual clarity, branding, or persuasive messaging—often tied to commercial or informational purposes. However, Marjane Satrapi’s use of the comic form to depict personal and historical trauma repositions design as a medium for testimony and empathy. The black-and-white illustrations, simple yet powerful, show how restraint in visual style can deepen emotional impact rather than limit it. Moreover, the combination of image and text allows for layers of meaning to unfold simultaneously, encouraging reflection rather than immediate comprehension. This challenges the idea that effective communication must be immediate or polished; instead, Persepolis demonstrates that ambiguity, subjectivity, and emotional resonance are equally valuable tools in a designer’s toolkit. It pushes the boundaries of what communication design can be—less about selling or simplifying, and more about witnessing, provoking, and connecting across cultural and emotional distances.
Text was reworded at points and gramatically corrected through AI
Gilmore, L. (2011) ‘Witnessing Persepolis: Comics, Trauma, and Childhood Testimony’, in Chaney, M.A. (ed.) Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autobiography and Graphic Novels. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 157–170.
For my Position through contextualising I first developed the sources I wanted to reference, this work was Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2000). An autobiographical novel that covers the authors experiences as a child at the begining of Iran’s revolution.
Inspired by her work and my own previous approach to my romanian identity, I dwelved into creating my own comics, covering glimpses into my own experiences as a Romanian immigrant lving in London. These experiences cover feelings of alienation and microaggresion experienced by me in the last five years.
Using my own styleI approached comic making in a slight untraditional approach as my comic does not follow typical comic layouts. I also created a few more sketched layouts of this translation.
My peers feedback was that, while this work was interesting, they wanted me to attempt to push past just creating work that is a comic and perhaps considering changing the medium or output.
Taking this into account I decided to create a piece of work that was more reflrective of my feelings and more autobiographical and present it in the form of a zine.
This was a hard iteration for me, as it pushed me to lightly expose experiences that soured my first few years of living here. WHile it felt like a slight surface level approach to this subject, to me this was a nerve wrecking presentation as everyone individually read through what I felt.
The feedback for this session once more was pointing me in a diffrent direction, this time questioning whether I should return to my original inquiry of my own identity as a Romanian in the UK. To my relief I was excited to return to a safe distance from exposing deeply personal experiences.
In my next attempt I turned towards reading a bit more on scholars perception of Persepolis and the reason it is such an impactful piece of media. SOmething that seemed to stand out to me was the fact that Persepolis used the childhood aspect as a tool of relating to the audience, something I took as inspiration in my next few posters.
For these iterations I tried to develop a few posters that did not rely on words and instead represented elements of my life. These are created with the intention of sparking questions and conversations within the viewer.
Zarina’s Home Is a Foreign Place is a series of 36 woodcut prints combining minimalist visuals with Urdu words to evoke memory, displacement, and belonging. Drawing on her personal history and global movements, the series weaves cultural, linguistic, and material references into a poignant meditation on home and identity. This selection of woodcuts inspired me to consider how graphic shapes can relate and represent feelings of displacement and of longing towards a home that never was, emphasizing that abstraction and simplicity can carry profound meaning. Her representations inspired my choice in my iterations to apply graphic romanian-inspired symbols to the original prints to create the layered effects.
Negotiated Identities/Saints and Tears is a 2015 international group exhibition held at Space One Eleven in Birmingham, Alabama, featuring artists from the American Deep South and Romania. The exhibition explores how personal and collective identities are shaped by political histories, cultural memory, and religious symbolism. Romanian artists, navigating post-communist realities, and American artists from the Deep South, confronting their own socio-political landscapes, engage in a visual dialogue. Through collaborative works, the exhibition delves into themes of autonomy, privacy, and the enduring impact of authoritarian regimes, highlighting the universal quest for self-definition amid complex historical contexts. Within this exhibition I was struck by the work of Karen Graffeo who’s use of graphic symbols overlaid on old romanian imagery inspired my subsequent iterations in this project.
3. Benjamin, W. (1969) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, pp. 1–26. (First published in 1935).
The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web.
In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin argues that mass reproduction technologies, like photography and film, strip art of its “aura”—its uniqueness and presence in time and space. This shift transforms how art is experienced, detaching it from tradition and ritual. While reproduction democratizes access, it also opens art to political manipulation. Benjamin explores how these changes reflect broader shifts in perception, politics, and cultural production. While this choice approaches more broader subject matter, I still found it fundamental in guiding my reflection upon the medium I have chosen. While not entirely political, my piece relies on the handmade aspect of it’s production to reflect and represent my feelings.
4. McLuhan, M. and Fiore, Q., 1967. The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects [PDF]. New York: Bantam Books. Available at: https://archive.org/details/pdfy-vNiFct6b-L5ucJEa (Accessed: 1 May 2025)
The youth of today are not permitted to approach the traditional heritage of mankind through the door of technological awareness.
The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore explores how media shapes human perception and society. Through a mix of text and visuals, it argues that the medium through which a message is conveyed is more influential than the content itself. McLuhan shows how technologies like print, television, and electronic media reconfigure our senses, behaviors, and environments, ultimately reshaping culture and identity in profound, often unnoticed ways. My own perception of this work is ephemeral, oftentimes I get lost in the language, but I find it inspirational in the way it aims to shape and explain the concept of media and how it influences today’s society. This book reflects on my own thought process of developing this project.
Fowler does not provide a detailed explanation for the pieces created; rather, they serve as an exercise in lino printing. The work is particularly notable for its blend of lino and woodblock printing, combined with the use of different coloured inks. It is an experiment in layering ink, creating a visual effect reminiscent of decoupage. This approach inspired my own work, giving me the idea to layer symbols over my initial designs. While I originally intended to replicate the feeling of these overlaid, somewhat chaotic images, I realized that such complexity could make the compositions too busy and difficult to keep fast and light-footed, which was essential for my 100 iterations.
6. Ford, L. O. (2011) Savage Messiah. London: Verso Books.
Savage Messiah by Laura Oldfield Ford is a zine-style, psychogeographic exploration of post-industrial London. Blending collage, drawing, and text, the work captures the emotional residue of urban decay, gentrification, and working-class displacement. It documents forgotten spaces and resistances, channeling punk aesthetics and radical politics. Through layered visuals and fragmented narratives, Ford evokes both rage and nostalgia, offering a haunting portrait of a city transformed by neoliberalism and erased histories. Inspired by Ford’s expression of individuality, I wanted to also use text and words at points to establish my feelings in regards to my identity. The layering of her images solidified my desire to add the collage style spin towards my second rounds of iterations.
At its core, my enquiry is straightforward: I seek to understand what this part of my identity—being a Romanian immigrant—truly means to me, and how I can express it visually through a graphic project. I chose lino printing as my method of exploration, as it offered a tactile and expressive medium that felt both accessible and unfamiliar. This process pushed me to reflect inward, which is something I’ve often avoided in my creative practice, either due to my own shyness or due to insecurity in myself. Previously, I focused on representing others, their experiences and stories, often leaving my own identity as a subtle, almost invisible footnote within my work.
Text was reworded at points and grammatically corrected through AI
Initially, hearing the brief in the morning made a shiver run down my spine. 100 iterations in a publication format. It seemed daunting as a one week project, through my mind ran all of the ways I could tackle this monumental task. I knew I wantedto continue experimenting and exploring my previous linoprinting project, the physicality and tactile process of it was a pleasant meditative experience I was thrilled to experience again.
Trying to keep my process quick and not overthinking it meant that I had no time to dwell on how this publication wuld be bound, as I ran a high risk of falling into overly complicated bindings. I opted for a coptic bound publication using thin smooth paper, this choice was motivated by my desire to have the iterations presented in an A5 format and weight related thinking.
For printing I opted to use a combination of blockprinting ink and of standard craft stamp inks to overlay on top, this was used with teh intention of having a speedier process in layering.
The result of this week was 100 prints of the same block done in fast succession which was an intentional move as it created unique and incomplete prints, over which I overlayed several designs that very directly lifted or inspired from romanian shirts, paintings and overall just graphic designs with a romanian inspiration.
The inquiry I worked towards was exploring identity and loss of it as an immigrant through linorprinting. A traditional medium depicting my uneasiness with my identity.
Week 2
Once again I found myself unsure how I would attain the number of iterations needed, but confident I could if I put my mind to it. By this point most of my life is packed in boxes in my room in preparation for my move, which limited my ammount of space or supplies to be used. Instead of seeking out fancy experimental paper, I opted to go straightforward, printer paper and blockprint ink.
I decided the variation of the iterations would come through the images the empty space of my stamp framed, the skirt acting as a window. The images were all self representative, places from my life, childhood foods, images from important historical romanian events.
This group project and the subsequent exploration of the way social media, particularly Youtube and its autoplay feature, opened my eyes deepened my understanding on the way disabled individuals are treated and integrated within society. This process highlighted how the structural nature of digital inaccessibility is perpetuated through the current climate. Rather than framing attention deficit and dopamine-seeking as individual failings, our discussions revealed how platform algorithms exploit neurodivergent users, creating engagement loops that disregard access needs.
Autoplay, for example, enforces a rhythm of consumption that disregards agency, making rest or disengagement more difficult, especially for users with executive function challenges. Through this project my team and I were able to expand and shape our understanding of accessibility, not only through design but also through advocating and understanding our peers’ needs. Moving forward, I aim to take this experience as part of my practice and continue to be mindful and take into account accessibility as I continue my work and expand my knowledge.
In his 2016 article, Tristan Harris explains how tech companies take advantage of psychological vulnerabilities to capture individual’s attention. Using systematic tactics like social validation and variable rewards, these social media platforms manipulate users into maximizing engagement at any cost. Harris advocates for ethical design that puts the user’s well-being over the need for profit. In the context of my project, his article exposes a way in which autoplay is especially designed to dictate participation and erode agency from the user, as it assumes what the user should see next and does not give them time to decide. This enforced continuity mirrors exploitative work rhythms, where relentless momentum overrides individual pacing and consent. Additionally, this algorithmic flow disregards individuals with disabilities or who are neurodivergent, as they may be more vulnerable to seeking entertainment or being confined to a sedentary lifestyle which means they are more likely to fall within autoplay capitalism.
Newport, C. (2019) Digital minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world. New York: Portfolio.
Within his 2019 book Digital minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world, Cal Newport argues for digital minimalism, a philosophy that advocates intentional technology use to reclaim focus and autonomy. He critiques the addictive nature of digital tools and proposes strategies like tech sabbaticals and solitude to foster deeper engagement with life. Newport’s call for intentional disconnection challenges the imposed temporal structures of digital engagement. By resisting the compulsive cycles of notifications and autoplay, digital minimalism disrupts the relentless pacing that diminishes agency and enforces participation. By introducing deliberate pauses between videos, the plugin forces users to make conscious decisions about their viewing, rather than being passively drawn into the next recommendation. This intervention embodies Newport’s argument that reclaiming attention requires active resistance against persuasive design. Breaking the rhythm of endless consumption, the plugin acts as a digital minimalist tool, empowering users to engage with content on their own terms rather than those dictated by platform algorithms.
In her 2016 Graduation Show piece Fragmented Time, Zhou represents the ease with which technology can whisk users away, immersing them in an endless cycle of distraction. The piece visually simulates how individuals fall into the digital rabbit hole, losing track of time as they are pulled deeper into fragmented, nonlinear engagement. Through her use of visual design, Zhou illustrates how digital spaces fracture attention, disrupting a person’s ability to focus and maintain intentional interaction with content. By capturing the overwhelming and disorienting nature of digital consumption, Fragmented Time highlights how technological structures dictate user behavior, often without their conscious awareness.
Zhou’s work directly influenced the design of our plugin, which aims to combat the same experience of overwhelming digital engagement by preventing users from binge-watching YouTube videos. Just as Fragmented Time exposes the chaotic and compulsive nature of digital consumption, our plugin intervenes by breaking the cycle of autoplay and endless recommendations. Inspired by Zhou’s representation of distraction, we sought to create a tool that restores user agency, forcing deliberate engagement rather than passive absorption. By interrupting YouTube’s seamless flow of content, the plugin replicates Zhou’s critique in an interactive form, transforming her visual exploration into a functional digital intervention.
Yehwan Song critiques the standardized structures of the web, questioning who controls digital spaces and how users navigate them. Through experimental web design, Song disrupts conventional interfaces, highlighting the hidden constraints that shape online experiences. Song’s work exposes how digital platforms dictate engagement patterns, limiting user agency. By resisting uniformity, it challenges the imposed temporal and spatial structures that enforce passive consumption and uninterrupted participation. This project utilizes the digital landscape to express its intended messaging, which inspired our project’s direction, to engage the internet as a medium of communication. It created a visual language for us to better understand how we wanted to express our perception of autoplay and the digital medium. Song’s experimental approach to digital design helped us conceptualize a visual and functional language for our intervention. By disrupting autoplay’s seamless flow, our plugin mirrors Song’s critique of passive digital consumption, transforming it into an active choice.
In the introduction for his book Tweets and the Streets (2012) Paolo Gerbaudo examines the role of social media within contemporary activism, arguing that platforms like Twitter and Facebook dictate collective action. While enabling mobilization and community these digital tools also shape and pace the direction of movements, constraining what the individuals interacting with the platforms can do. By extension, Youtube, which is a social media, also imposes temporal structures and directions, prioritizing virality and algorithmic urgency in order to dictate engagement. The rapid, fleeting nature of online movements mirrors broader societal rhythms that demand constant participation, often at the cost of sustained organizing and reflection upon the behaviour and media that is being consumed. This felt especially relevant to our project as we felt that the autoplay feature exists as a form of determining the pace of the users’ engagement with the work, choreographing the way the platform is to be used and engaged with.
In their 1967 book The Medium is the Massage: An inventory of Effects Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore argue that the medium itself shapes human perception and society more than the content that is delivered. They explore how media alter sensory experiences and social structures, emphasizing that technological environments dictate how people think, act, and interact. McLuhan’s insights highlight how media impose temporal structures that govern attention and behavior. This text was also important in our research regarding our project, as we found that autoplay develops itself as almost a medium of expression, as the individual is being exposed to information through the algorithmic stream of videos. The rhythmic flow of digital content, from autoplay to infinite scroll, enforces patterns of passive consumption, shaping participation in ways often unnoticed. This also is expressed through the use of pop-ups in our work, the pop-ups become the medium and therefore the message is also within it.
