make : believe
make : believe is the culmination of Appalachian State’s 2024 senior class theses in the form of interactive exhibition:
make : believe invites you to step into realms beyond the present where past and future collide to offer bold visions and alternative realities. This exhibition brought together diverse designers who used their craft to envision possibilities for our world, addressing today’s challenges with creativity and critical insight. Through thought-provoking posters, audience participation, and speculative design, make : believe is a space to imagine, and perhaps even believe in, a better future.
The exhibition expanded upon the concept of a poster show as a method of 2D storytelling and communication by adding a “takeaway” element. Posters are an important design tool because it allows for the audience to quickly and effectively take in the information that the designer wanted to express. However, this newly learned information is easily forgotten once the audience leaves the exhibition/show.
Thus, our solution was to create takeaway catalogs that the audience builds themselves in order to remind them of the ideas shared. At the main entryway of the exhibition site, Parallel Brewing Company, the audience sees the vinyl description, stickers, and pre-made catalog covers. As the audience tours the posters, they picked up catalog pages that hung on nails underneath the posters. Once they collected all the pages, the catalog could be easily bound.
The poster and catalog materials were printed through digital and RISO methods. The medium and large-sized posters were printed digitally printed through the art department’s specialized printing facility. Digital printing allows for fine details and high color payoff which was perfect for those posters. In contrast, the small posters and catalog materials were printed through the art department’s RISO. The RISO is best for printing multiples, so it was the best choice for the materials we intended to giveaway/sell.
In terms of branding, we decided to keep the exhibition simple to support the color and messages of the posters/catalog instead of overshadowing. The iconic make : believe logo inspired a unique framing that we utilized in promotional materials. With guidance from our professor, the “believe” element was created by dragging a paper cut-out of the word down a scanner bed. The scan was then edited as a vector in Adobe Illustrator.
One thing to note was that the senior exhibition development process overlapped with Hurricane Helene. Much of western North Carolina was affected by Helene, and Boone was not an exception. Thus, we felt strongly about supporting our community in their recovery. We decided to sell our RISO posters during the exhibition, with the proceeds going to a local charity, Project Do Good, that was actively involved in the recovery efforts.
