PROJECT OVERVIEW

Storytelling is one of the principal ways we organize our experiences of the world. Through stories, we communicate with one another, make sense of events, and explore different perspectives.

Stories can take many forms—written, image-based, diagrammatic, static, time-based, interactive, or any combination. They may move forward or backward in time, unfold in parallel, circle back, branch, or invite the audience to explore. How a story is told shapes how it is experienced and understood.

In this project, you will develop one story and interpret and reinterpret it through two distinctly different mediums and two different visual languages. Each interpretation should be a standalone narrative experience, not simply the same content translated into another format.

The project is student-driven and research-driven. You will investigate an area of interest, gather material, discover the story within it, and explore how different mediums can construct different tellings. This process will also prepare you for the independent research, conceptual development, and complex design work of Capstone.

THE STORY + THE TELLING

Throughout the project, consider the distinction between:

PLOT / CONTENT — What is the story?
The facts, events, people, voices, observations, research, and raw materials that make up the story.

TELLING / MEDIUM — How is the story told?
How the material of the story (content) is constructed into an experience through its medium (structure) and visual language. Each interpretation should use a distinct medium and visual language, shaping how the story is experienced.

You are not simply collecting material or illustrating a topic. You are discovering a story and making intentional decisions about how an audience will encounter it.

STARTING POINT: AUDIENCE + GOAL

Before deciding exactly what your story will be, identify an area of interest and begin considering:

/ What subject, theme, question, person, group, place, or experience are you interested in exploring?

/ Who is your intended audience?

/ What is the goal of your project? What do you want your audience to know, feel, question, understand, or do?

Your audience and goal should help guide your research—what you investigate, how you investigate it, and what material you gather. They may become more specific as your story develops.

FIND + GATHER: STORY-BUILDING APPROACHES

Choose one of the following approaches as a starting point for researching, generating, and gathering narrative material. These are not rigid categories; you may use multiple research strategies as your project develops.

PLACE — Observe + Collect
Investigate a place through observation, photography, sound, artifacts, language, etc.

VOICES — Ask + Listen
Interview multiple people around a shared question, subject, or experience.

ARCHIVE — Gather + Reconstruct
Build from photographs, documents, correspondence, objects, records, or other found material.

SYSTEM — Trace + Reveal
Follow an existing process, system, or journey to uncover a story—for example, a daily commute, the path of a discarded object, or what happens behind a familiar service.

EXPERIMENT — Act + Document
Create a situation, action, or set of conditions and document what happens. For example, follow a self-imposed rule for a defined period of time, change one aspect of a familiar routine, or create an interaction whose outcome you cannot fully predict.

What to Collect

/ Imagery—photographs, drawings, diagrams, charts, maps, textures, colors, etc.

/ Text-based content from multiple sources/types—verbal language/copy, audio transcripts, contextual copy, or language found in artifacts such as signs, conversations, letters, menus, instructions, etc.

/ Sound (audio)

/ Objects, artifacts, observations, data, interactions, or other forms of documentation

/ Anything else you can think of. Be creative!

BUILD THE STORY: NARRATIVE MAPPING – IN CLASS EXERCISE

Once you have gathered a substantial body of research and raw material, begin to build your story by mapping it. Look for relationships, patterns, tensions, and possibilities within your material.

Create a diagram or map that helps you explore the story’s possible structure. Consider where it begins, what changes, how it develops, and where it ends. Your story might move forward or backward in time, circle back on itself, fragment, branch, operate in parallel, or follow another structure entirely.

Ask: What does the audience know or experience at the beginning? What changes? What might they know, feel, question, or understand differently by the end?

From this process, you should be able to articulate your story in 1–2 sentences. This is not simply your topic. It should express what you have discovered within your material and what story you want to tell.

DESIGN THE TELLING

Once you have begun to build the story from your research and gathered material, explore how it might be told. Use your narrative map to make intentional decisions about what the audience encounters, when, and how. These decisions will develop differently through each of your two mediums.

SELECT → SEQUENCE → CONNECT → PACE → REVEAL → OMIT

What belongs in the story? What doesn’t? What does the audience encounter first? Why does one piece of information follow another? Where do you slow down or speed up? What do you reveal immediately, and what do you withhold?

Consider strategies such as repetition, accumulation, contrast, interruption, reversal, fragmentation, parallel narratives, and looping. You might also layer different types of content—for example, a personal experience alongside historical photographs, data, or another perspective.

The story is built through choices about what the audience encounters, when, and how.

INTERPRET + REINTERPRET: MEDIUM + VISUAL LANGUAGE

Building from the If This Were a Medium project, apply your understanding of how the structures, affordances, and disaffordances of different mediums shape communication and audience experience.

You will create two different interpretations of your story through two distinctly different mediums and two different visual languages.

Consider the affordances and disaffordances of each medium—what it allows, requires, encourages, limits, or excludes. These might involve time, sequence, interaction, navigation, physicality, space, sound, audience control, participation, or sensory experience.

What can this medium do with the story that another medium cannot?

Your two interpretations should not be designed as components of a campaign or brand system. Instead, treat each as a standalone narrative experience shaped by medium, visual language, audience, and perspective.

The structure, pacing, and audience experience should shift intentionally between interpretations. The second outcome should not simply translate the first into another format.

As you explore each interpretation, develop a visual vocabulary—typefaces, colors, symbols, imagery, shapes, textures, materials, etc.—and investigate the characteristics appropriate to the medium.

This project is process-oriented and experimental. A deep ideation and sketching process is expected. Play with possibilities before choosing a final concept direction for each interpretation.

STRUCTURAL MEANING-UNITS

What are the Structural Meaning-Units (SMUs) of each medium, and how can they help can shape your telling? These may operate at different scales, from individual elements to larger structures or systems.

As you develop your two interpretations, identify the SMUs that are most important to each and consider how they function, relate to one another, and shape the audience’s experience.

What happens to the story when these structures change? How does audience interpretation shift?

PROJECT PROCESS

Phase I: Define + Investigate

• Identify several narrative themes/directions (2–3) you would like to pursue.
• Consider subject/theme, target audience, point of view, and communication goal.
• Select a story-building approach to guide your investigation.
• Begin considering what you want your audience to know, feel, question, understand, or do.

Phase II: Research + Gather

• Conduct research and gather a substantial body of material.
• Explore multiple sources and research strategies, including fieldwork where appropriate.
• Document your findings and organize your material.
• Follow emerging questions, patterns, and discoveries.

Phase III: Discover + Map the Story

• Analyze your gathered material and identify the story you want to tell.
• Develop a narrative map exploring relationships, structure, and possible arcs.
• Articulate your story in 1–2 sentences.
• Begin considering how the story might be interpreted through different mediums.

Phase IV: Conceptualize + Interpret

• Explore possible mediums and visual languages for your two interpretations.
• Develop multiple concepts through research, ideation, sketching, and experimentation.
• Consider how each medium’s affordances can shape the telling.
• Identify important SMUs and explore how they contribute to meaning and audience experience.

Phase V: Develop + Execute

• Refine and develop both narrative interpretations.
• Test and evaluate how each medium communicates the story.
• Continue to make intentional decisions about structure, pacing, visual language, and audience experience.
• Prepare your final work and process documentation for presentation.

CROSS-MEDIA APPLICATION

Based on your research, personal interests, target audience, and project goals, develop one story and create two distinctly different interpretations through two different mediums and two different visual languages. Your mediums may be existing forms or ones you invent.

The two outcomes should be distinct, well-crafted interpretations of the same underlying story in which the unique structures, affordances, and disaffordances of each medium are an integral part of your design solution.

They are not adaptations of one another or components of a campaign. Each should reconsider the story through the possibilities of its particular medium and visual language.

DELIVERABLES

/ Abstract: Brief description of your story, research interests, subject, point of view, target audience, project goal, and use of medium + visual language in your strategic design approach (100–150 words)

/ Narrative Map: Documentation of how you analyzed, discovered, and constructed the narrative from your gathered material

/ Narrative Interpretations: Two well-crafted interpretations based on the same story, utilizing two different mediums and two different visual languages

/ Documentation: Research, ideation, experimentation, and design process (sketchbook, etc.)

RESOURCES

Some examples of past Narrative Projects