Communication Design |

I’m Right Here

Yuxiao Wang

See it On Campus: Level 2

Overview

Dreams are like the lake in which you bathe. The lake’s ripples will crumble your figure, but you are still the real you in every ripple.

Inspired by the analysis of the dream ego and symbology, the project explores the inner state of individuals’ unconscious thoughts, and promotes an attitude of conscious self-regulation.

Problem Space

I and my friends of the same age often have stories about the environment, parent-child relationships, school, and competitive relationships in our dreams. The uncontrollability of these dreams is often linked to emotional states such as depression, anxiety, and stress in the dream stage. Oftentimes, when we feel “wrong,” we can’t identify what’s wrong with us, or we can’t talk about it because of other oppressive forces.
The degree of control over the dream ego can largely reflect the degree of control people have over their emotions and situations in the waking world. In my dreams, stories often turn real-world emotions upside down toward negative answers, and most can’t be controlled.
It is like the illogical plot and elements of a dream. They are here, and we are aware of what they might mean, or aware of the red flags they contain, but have trouble repeating them, or subconsciously refuse to analyze and accept the meaning behind them. Dreams, like the ineffable problems of the waking world, can be easy to understand, or complicated, but they are often ignored or deeply buried.

Dream symbology & The entrance to self-perceiving

Rooms in dreams are generally considered as symbols of how we compartmentalize different areas of our minds and are considered the places we have deep within our minds. Inspired by the symbology meaning of rooms, and inspired by dreams from my friends and myself, I’ve decided to make a pop-up book to guide the audiences into the realization of self-exploration and provide a prototype for the potential choice of digging into the the self-perceiving process through dream analysis.
The character I designed is a genderless creature with huge eyes and a head display. Stripping away extra human features removes the idiosyncrasy. Eyes are the windows to the soul, and the face that shows them becomes the eyes that need to look directly into their own or the other person’s soul in a magnified form.
A symbol can have multiple meanings in different people’s interpretations. Therefore, the people who is best able to interpret their dreams are the dreamers themselves. As the story progresses and as the character steps closer and closer into the zone of dreams, the book gradually introduces four dreams that symbolize the formation of the character’s life. The characters in each dream are put together to form the characters themselves.

Typography

My font choice for the book and the posters focuse on the features of dreamy and delicate, yet organic, for fitting with the complex lineworks and slightly grotesque visuals. Gyahegi as the main display font, together with Didot as the body text of the posters, showcasing the subtle elegancy and brings out glittering visuals for delighting the illustration style while remaining the readablity. FZShiGuangKeSong as the body text for the book, emphasized the disturbed vibe in the stories by its organic feature.

Rooms of dreams

Each of these four posters leads to the four dreams in the book. The left and right sides of the titles are keywords for the meaning of the dreams, while the eyes at the bottom symbolize the identity of the characters in the dreams.