Fungi: Beyond the Eye
Type: University Course • Role: Creative Lead • Length: 3 months • Programs Used: Adobe Suite
Reimagining the town of Stratford through an exploration of non-human activity: Fungi networks🍄
Unseen to the human eye, fungi networks called mycelium are one of nature's biggest players. Yet, because they are underground, we often don't even consider their existence.
Humans often tend to forget the complex relationships and processes that exist in the natural environment.
Our interactive media art installation aims to challenge our audience to reconsider and reimagine the environment around them, and to reflect on just how much is happening, all the time, through non-human activity.
Three of this course's student projects were selected to be showcased in the Lights On Stratford Festival, and our project was selected. You can read more about our involvement in the festival here.
Planning + Initial Artifacts
For this project, I worked in a team of 10 people. I worked in Media Creation with one other designer and took on the role of creative lead. I oversaw the creation of all visual assets, including marketing content.
The Media Creation team collaborated most closely with the Marketing and Communications team to help create social media posts, fulfill requests, and so on. We also worked with the Technology team to produce the final installation assets.
Before beginning to create a style guide, we first conducted field research on local Stratford fungi at a nearby trail.
Our field research inspired our illustration kit as well as the overall aesthetic we wanted to go for. It was helpful to see what types of fungi were local to Stratford to recreate them later in our graphics.
Following this, I created our project style guide, which contained communications guidelines as well as visual guidelines and practices.
Our walk through the woods inspired me to add an organic, textured, and vaguely floral touch to our existing aesthetic of black and white microscopic images.
This new aesthetic touch was inspired by the woods themselves, the colours present in fungi and the surrounding nature, and the curved and almost flowery shapes of the local fungi we found.
Style Guide + Brand Assets
Style Guide Sample Pages
Logo
Illustration Set
Social Media + Digital + Print Graphics
Final Installation + Demo
To interact with our installation, users scanned a QR code to access our website (as shown in the video). On our website, wherever they drag their finger will show up on the projection screen as a small circle.
Wherever the circle is on screen will reveal an underlaying animation of the mycelium network, almost as if looking through a microscope. Many people can interact with the installation at once, creating a sense of community and playfulness while they discover the underlying root system together.
Our installation on the festival grand opening day
Overall, I had a great time working on this project! One thing I learned is how connected a team has to be to see a project like this from start to finish.
My team of 10 was broken up into multiple subgroups (Team Lead, PM, Tech, Media Creation, and Marketing). Though we had so many people working on this project, I felt that a lot more effort than expected went into coordinating and organizing.
For my team specifically (Media Creation), the two of us designers had to keep in very consistent communication with Marketing to make sure all assets followed the Style Guide, for example.
This was also my first time acting as a Creative Lead, and it was thrilling yet at times difficult.
I really, really enjoyed taking our project lead's initial visual concept and developing it even further to what it eventually became. As someone who pays close attention to detail, it was easy for me to spot if another team member's asset didn't exactly follow our style guide. One skill I had to really apply during this role was providing constructive feedback, in order to improve the overall quality of our team's work while creating a transparent, friendly environment for everyone.