State of Mind
Publication Design, Typography, Research, Content Collection
Problem
Understanding and recognizing our emotions is vital for our well-being. Emotions are crucial to our ability to adapt to the challenges of our daily lives. It can be difficult for people, myself included, to recognize emotions and put our feelings into words. This can cause difficulties in interpersonal relationships and responding to emotional distress.
Approach
Fueled by my own need to understand the emotions I was feeling and why I was feeling them, I began researching why we experience emotions, how to identify those emotions, coping mechanisms, how emotions have traditionally been portrayed in the media, and the stigma that surrounds emotions. Using what I found, I collected articles to include in a publication that is dedicated to helping readers analyze and understand their emotions, each issue discussing a different emotion.
Solution
State of Mind is a publication that breaks dedicated to helping people understand emotions. The publication explains what emotions are and why we experience them, cultural perceptions of emotions, and how to cope with emotions. I was challenged to use only typography to illustrate the entire publication. As the reader progresses through the publication, the typographic and color treatment changes, mimicking the decompression and understanding of the emotion.
Final Concept
Process
In developing State of Mind, I collected content and began to organize how the information would be presented to the reader. Using flat-plans and thumbnails I was able to plan how the information as a whole would look. Our goal for this project was to use only typography throughout the entire publication. We completed many typography workshops that allowed us to explore the different forms we could create.
Section 1 - Understanding Emotions
The first section titled "Understanding Emotions," breaks down the emotion in order for people to understand how to recognize their emotions. This section discusses the science behind emotions and why they occur, how the body reacts to different emotions, and how to recognize emotions.
Section 2 - Cultural Perceptions
The next section of the publication addresses the cultural perceptions of different emotions. This section includes articles that discuss societal expectations that include suppressing emotions such as anger, as well as articles that talk about how emotions are portrayed in the media.
Section 3 - What to do About Emotions
The final section of the publication contains articles that move into how to identify and then cope with the emotions one experiences. It is unhealthy to ignore or suppress emotions and the articles and personal accounts in this section help readers to understand it is okay to feel emotions.
