[ g r a p h i c d e s i g n ]




This artefact was designed as part of my Capstone Project in my final semester at RMIT University. We were required to engage in human-centred research on our partners in order to best design an artefact that accurately portrays them as a person as well as a designer.
I initially proposed a few different concepts to Daryl but he was most keen on incorporating a puzzle into his artefact due to its aim of making the receiver think in order to solve it. I started researching into different types of code and puzzles and for a while, was considering using the Pigpen cipher due to its clean geometric lines, which matches Daryl’s design aesthetic. However, I wanted to come up with an artefact that had a little more depth and simplicity than a simple substitution cipher to better represent an insight into Daryl’s mind.
Daryl’s final artefact is a 10cm by 10cm namecard with encrypted text of thought-provoking questions and statements that the receiver can decipher with the help of the given hint as well as the guide found on the card within the external sleeve. I specifically chose to use the Vignere cipher encrypt Daryl’s messages as it requires a keyword in order to be deciphered. The keyword in this case being “DARYL”, which represents how he is needed in order to make sense of what is otherwise unintelligible.