I had no idea what I was getting myself in for on day one, and I found that extremely exciting. Any random ideas I might've had were thrown out the window when I saw the brief. I was lucky to have two excellent mentors who provided assistance and feedback, and I was honoured to be picked by them as a second place finalist, winning an internship at their studio in Aberdeen.
In Novemeber 2019, I was selected by my college lecturers to take part in the Graphic Design Festival Scotland 2019 Live Project.
This is a two day event which pairs young designers with industry mentors and challenges them to create something out of an extremely vague brief. For 2019, the brief was to "create something inspired by what [I] identified with as home".
I was delighted to be mentored by Sam and Claire from Aberdeen based design firm FortyTwo. While they mentored a small group of us, each individual designer opted to create their own solution to the brief. However, we took advantage of power by numbers and spent a good amount of time brainstorming, throwing out ideas, and discussing eachothers potential solutions.
My colleagues in my group had lots of brilliant ideas based on their own interpretation of home, most of which were very personal and distinctive. I used this trend to come up with my own concept – a more general take on the meaning of the word 'home'.
I noted that while everyone's personal take is unique to them, they all have one underlying thing in common, and that is that they take place on planet Earth. Until contact with extraterrestrial life is made, it's safe to assume that everyone can relate to life on Earth.
That doesn't mean we're all the same, of course. But it did make me wonder:
<aside> ❓ Is living on Earth enough of a mutual characteristic that any two people in the world can have something in common to talk about?
</aside>
Simply put: an app that pairs you with another random stranger from somewhere else on the planet. There's no personal information involved, all you need to provide is a name. Once you're paired, you can talk to your partner as much, or as little as you like. If you don’t like what someone’s saying, you can block them. They’ll disappear from your life, and their spot will be filled by someone else, and you’ll never see them again.
The idea is fundamentally really simple, make your home bigger by chatting to someone you don’t immediately have anything in common with, and see what happens. You might make a friend for life, you might speak one time, you might block them immediately.