VIEWPOINT
This Pentagram Young Designers brief was about designing a standalone magazine for WITNESS, an organisation that helps people use video and technology to protect and defend human rights. After researching Pentagram’s breakdown of WITNESS’ branding identity, I decided to further develop their emphasis on "holding onto the viewer’s gaze" to ensure they are paying attention to what WITNESS has to say and offer. Informed and inspired by this, my design concept revolves around the interactive process of experiencing afterimages, and my design ideas relate to their visual elements and characteristics.
The main character of my design concept is the ‘red dot’. This red dot represents three ideas: firstly, the recording button and symbol; secondly, the focus point in a camera’s viewfinder; and lastly, but most importantly, the focus point in afterimages.
An afterimage is an optical illusion whereby an image continues to appear in the eyes after a period of exposure to the original picture. I believe this process of maintaining eye contact with the red dot unites with the aspect of WITNESS’s brand identity that aims to hold the viewer’s gaze, as according to Pentagram.
The experience of perceiving afterimages can be likened to recording and imprinting an image onto the viewer’s mind. For every second longer they are ‘recording’ the image by staring at the red dot, the afterimage becomes more and more detailed.
Additionally, the act of blinking rapidly to help view afterimages creates a flashing effect on the image, which creates urgency and feels like a warning sign.
It also becomes a visual ‘background sound’ accompanying the articles--the image faintly remains in the reader’s vision as they read the magazine.
The front cover is a ‘blank canvas’ for the reader to project their vision of the following page’s afterimage onto.
If you’d like to try this, stare at the red dot on the below image for at least 20 seconds then scroll back up to the above image to experience the afterimage illusion on the front cover. Blink fast to see the image better.