Spring 2023
Navigating the World
Objective
To develop a series of three posters that have a cohesive visual system using experimental typography as the main element. These posters are to persuade viewers to attend a series of fictional events for three different inventors: Claudius Ptolemy, Gladys West, and Kursat Ceylan.
Research
Claudius Ptolemy was a 2nd century Roman astrologer who created this first map of the universe, with Earth at its center. Gladys West is an American mathematician who modeled the shape of the Earth and worked to develop satellite geodesy models, which were used in the creation of the GPS. Lastly, Kursat Ceylan is from Istanbul, and he is blind. He is the co-founder of WeWalk LTD, which is a smart cane designed to help the mobility of the visually impaired. After researching, I created a venn diagram to create connections between the inventors and their work.
Free play + Concept Skecthes
I started by doing free play with different words on paper to experiment with what you can do with type by hand. Then I used my free play to sketch different ideas for the poster series based on the concepts I came up with after my research.
Process Work 1
After sketching, I just focused on designing the poster for Gladys West. I experimented a lot with lines and maps to show how she worked with mapping the shape of the earth.
Process Work 2
Then when I found a direction and concept that was working for Gladys and that I could apply to the other two inventors, I used that as a basis to create the other two posters in the series.
Final poster series: Navigating the World
Concept: The three inventors Claudius Ptolemy, Gladys West, and Kursat Ceylan all explored and experimented with new ideas in their respective fields. Their inventions dealt with understanding and navigating different points of view of the world.
Method: I cut and collaged different maps and arranged them by hand around the inventors’ names to create composition. Then I experimented with changing the colors of each poster to help all the elements to work together. Lastly, I used a grid to align the information about the events with their names.
Claudius Ptolemy
During the 2nd century, Ptolemy made one of the first models of the universe with the Earth at the center and the planets were orbiting around the Earth. His controversial model was not completely accurate, however it enabled astronomers to be able to make accurate predictions and formed the basis of our understanding of the motions of stars and planets for over a thousand years.
I used a map of his geocentric model of the universe and collaged it around his name. I put an emphasis on the curves and circles that represent everything in the universe revolving around the Earth.
Gladys West
West was an American mathematician who made contributions to the modeling of the shape of the Earth and worked to develop satellite geodesy models. Her work was used with the GPS by allowing the GPS system to make accurate calculations of any place on Earth so that it could help people navigate the surface of the Earth.
I cut out different world maps into shapes to look like topographic contour lines of the surface of the Earth and layered them. I did this to represent how she worked with mapping the actual shape of the Earth.
Kursat ceylan
Awarded an Honorable Mention in the Graphis New Talent 2024 international competition.
Ceylan was born blind in Istanbul. He is the co-founder of WeWalk LTD, which is a smart cane designed to help the mobility of the visually impaired and he partnered with Microsoft. He wanted to help people like him to be able to comfortably navigate the world independently.
I chose to collage maps of different city streets. This is because his smart cane helped people who are visually impaired to navigate the streets independently and also safely.
