Interaction Design · Project 1 of 3 · Weeks 1–5
Advanced GD Project 2: Branding an Emotion
Abstract translation and the visual language of feeling
FORMAT
Individual
WEEKS
3-6
METHODS
Emotion research · Scholarly source analysis · Academic writing · Visual translation · Abstract mark-making · Adobe Illustrator · Color psychology · Typography as expression · Brand application design · Optional: monoprinting · embossing · paper engineering · material samples · Case study writing · Presentation
TAGS
Identity Systems, Semiotics, Design Education, Design Thinking
Why this project
Branding an emotion requires doing what sophisticated graphic design always does: giving form to something that has none. The emotion has no logo, no typeface, no color waiting to be assigned. What it has is a psychological structure, a cultural history, and a phenomenological character. The design challenge is to find the visual language that embodies that structure — to translate research into form rather than illustrate feeling with symbols.
The project has been part of the course across multiple iterations and remains both the most demanding and the most generative. When the subject resists literal representation, every design choice must be justified by something other than habit or preference.
The Brief
PROJECT PROMPT
Select an emotion from a list of options. It's not a mood or a concept — it's a specific, identifiable emotion. Then make it into a brand. This is not a metaphor project. The brand system you design — logo, color palette, typography, pattern, applications — must function as a real visual identity for an abstract entity. The emotion is the client. Your job is to translate its psychological and cultural dimensions into a coherent visual language.
The project begins with research. Your research paper (4–5 pages, minimum 5 scholarly sources) investigates the emotion's psychological structure and cultural dimensions — how it is experienced, expressed, and understood differently across contexts. That research is the foundation for every visual decision you make. The color palette is not chosen because it looks right. It is chosen because the research supports it.
At least one application must include a tactile or material dimension. If the emotion benefits from physical expression — comfort through soft texture, tension through rough surface, grief through weight — that expression should be present in the work.
A professional case study (3-5 pages) accompanies the final deliverables. The case study explains the project as you would to a client or in a portfolio: problem, research, process, solution.
DELIVERABLE
Research paper: 4–5 pages, minimum 5 scholarly sources (psychological and cultural dimensions of chosen emotion)
Visual brand system: logo, color palette, typography, pattern or texture
Brand applications: minimum 3, at least 1 with tactile or material dimension
Professional case study: 2–3 pages (problem, research, process, solution)
Presentation: prepared verbal statement with visual documentation
Self-assessment — see separate assignment sheet
What I've learned from running this
The project's success depends almost entirely on the quality of the research before any visual work begins. Students who treat research as a requirement — collecting five sources and summarizing them — tend to produce visual systems that are competent but shallow. Students who genuinely investigate the psychology and cultural dimensions of their chosen emotion make unexpected decisions. Those surprises are the signal that the research did its work.
The case study requirement asks students to do something many find harder than writing a research paper: account honestly for a finished project. What the emotion was. What decisions were made. Why. Whether they succeeded. That accounting is a professional skill, and the discomfort of it is productive.