Jan Christoph Somcio- MA Graphic Design and Art Direction
I am a designer with a background in Business and Marketing, allowing me to create an understanding and meaning through my designs efficiently. My practice represents a culture visually, where every choice carries meaning and the final piece makes sense to the people it's for.
For my synthesis project, I created HEARD magazine, a self-initiated editorial magazine that examines the visual design of basketball uniforms as a site of protest. The decision to create an editorial magazine reflects on my ambitions to work in sport design as well as one of my design beliefs being that editorial design being in a form of cultural documentation and understanding. Going down this route with my project demonstrates that I am not designing just for the aesthetic alone but also for the argument.
With my project, I wanted to demonstrate a practice that is specific in culture, analytically grounded and visually resolved. It is an editorial design that treats the basketball uniforms, typography, the colour system and the layout as objects with political meaning. Every decision with the designs is an argument about what the uniform communicates, not just a visual response to the subject matter.
*highlights of the magazine are attached as well as a LINK TO THE FULL MAGAZINE*
