Final Major Project - Quirkology - Identity Development

Much of my early research centered around the subject itself, from reading online sources, to reading the book on Quirkology. I had initially incorrectly interpreted the brief to concern what was in the exhibit itself (interactive features, multimedia, etc) I also initially decided that my target audience should be anyone but children, although I would discover upon paying a visit to the Science Museum that the majority of its patrons were young families and classes of schoolchildren on day trips. However, from reading Professor Wisemans book on Quirkology, the subject matter was mainly intended for a more adult audience and that only children of a secondary school education level (ie: 11+) would fully understand the topics discussed by the science so I stuck by my decision.

My main problem with this brief was how I was to overcome was the sheer breadth of the topic. It appeared that from reading about the subject that Quirkology could be about anything or everything and that Wisemans research into the many-faceted self-devised subject would never be fully completed since modern life and popular culture are always evolving and hence developing new possible avenues of research.

My final solution was to adopt an all-encompassing concept. If Quirkology can be about everything and anything in our modern lives the maybe its identity could represent everything and anything. So using a variety of objects from ones involved in various facets of the book (a Coke Can from the section on Coke sales in ‘Making your mind up’, a house key from the section on property sales being superstitiously based on a house number, etc) to form the letters of a logo. This solution was inspired by a much cruder font I came across in Neville Brody’s Fuse project some 16 years earlier which was constructed from various silhouettes of a series of objects from a series of perspectives. My illustrations regarded the objects face on, almost as schematics, with the toughest of which being what should form the 'g' with the final choice being a receiver from an old telephone (used in what ultimately was ‘the worlds funniest joke’). The final logo is featured on all of the material I produced and I also produced an animated version for my iPad App demo which has also been uploaded as an MP4 file.