Project done in a graphic design class. Created a campaign about phone addiction in the form of 2D, 3D, and screen mediums. Also designed and printed a campaign book (2025).
Video Component
During the creation of this campaign, I recorded a series of clips of people consumed by their phones in public settings. The video is a total of one minute and fourteen seconds and uses an original piano composition for audio. The composition is entirely improvised and if you listen closely, you can hear a few mistakes and hesitations. It is a reflection of life: imperfect, multifaceted, unpredictable.
Painted Poster Series
In this series, I took three iconic paintings, American Gothic by Grant Wood, The Son of Man by René Magritte, and Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer and altered them. In each variation, I replaced the faces with a phone and stylized it according to the painting.
Painting is an intimate act of noticing and capturing the beauty of the observed. I wanted to challenge my audience to consider if these iconic paintings still capture something beautiful and portray a reality that is slowly replacing our human nature. I wanted to emphasize the attachment people have to their phones and how it is perceived in a literal sense. Our identities are no longer shown by who we are but how we show ourselves online. We are neglecting our innate qualities of expression, vulnerability, and emotion for distraction and avoidance.
In-Situ
Photo Realistic Diptych
For this series, I wanted to portray phone addiction as a choice. I focused on the heart, a vital organ, and the eyes, one of the most important senses. I used a chest x-ray and replaced the heart with a phone. During my research I found that 46% of people claimed their phone as something they could not live without (Perrin, 2017). This inspired me to use a heart as it is something nobody can live without. A heart is representative of emotion, mortality, and love, all things technology lacks. I want my audience to ask themselves what they choose to keep them going: love or the absence of it all?
In the other poster, I overlaid a phone camera lens over the eye of a woman. Both the phone camera and eye perform the same action through different outlets and perspectives. Similar to the Painted Poster Series, this poster revisits the idea of observation. Our perceptions and memories are formed by our observations and presence in the world. The more we rely on seeing the world through our phones, the less present we become in our own memories and observations. We have become too focused on documenting our lives with digital keepsakes for the future that we miss all the little things happening in our present. We need to consider our past perceptions and decide how we want to shape those to come.
In-Situ
De-Evolution Mural
The De-Evolution Mural was inspired by The March of Progress by Rudolph Zallinger. It starts with a man, no phone in hand looking forward, and ends with a man experiencing “tech neck;” a condition characterized by neck pain, stiffness, and discomfort caused by prolonged and frequent use of electronic devices (Mayo Clinic Health System, 2024). I wanted to highlight how we are de-evolving as a society as we are physically changing because of phone addiction. The mural is scaled to be life sized so that as people walk by, they can see if their behavior mirrors those on the wall.
3D Bench Installation
The 3D Bench Installation is a literal depiction of how we are divided and isolated by our phones. It was inspired by my own observations as I saw numerous people sitting so close to each other with no intention of acknowledging or noticing one another. The bench is divided in half by a large phone with active screens on both sides. Neither person can see who sits on the other side. On one side of the bench, an endless loop of scrolling will play with an overlay of my campaign title, Look Up. I am magnifying my audience’s behaviors in a way that emphasizes how isolating it has become and is something they cannot ignore. On the other side of the bench, the screen will display an overlay of everyone who has sat there, at the same time, and will include the current user. Since the user cannot see the other side, I wanted to highlight how many people have been in their place: all the connections they are missing. I hoped to create a minute of realization and reflection. Instead of singling out one person’s behavior, I am recognizing a community in hopes that each individual will work to better society as a whole.
