‘There is no creativity and innovation without failure’

To create & Innovate

’To create and innovate’ is an installation aimed to bring calmness to QCA students. With stress impacting all students in different ways, I found it was imperative to address and to find ways in reducing stress levels through the visual elements presented within the installation. The main purpose of the project is to evoke feelings of calmness, allowing students to feel grounded from their daily stressors while encouraging a personal response from the audience.

Through careful selection of the colour palette (blue for calmness) and gold (for success), in combination with organic shapes (representing mountain scapes)and compounding art (representing nature) presenting an impactful and visually interesting work for students to enjoy on their way to class - acts as a refresher and a reset for one’s stress levels.

Task: Typographic intervention - installation.

"There is no creativity and innovation without failure". This mural was situated in the QCA block (Queensland College of art) a place where creativity thrives. This quote essentially tells the audience that it is okay to fail, that there is no success without failure. The visual elements compliment this quote as it provides them with a sense of calmness as explained before.

The brief was to take a typography and put it into context. To create concepts of a mural that would go through an approval process. The mural needs to successfully interact with the target audience (University students) and to approach a social issue - in this case students mental health. Thorough research was conducted such as qualitative research to find mental health triggers on campus and what often helps alleviate these emotions. From there, secondary research was conducted in response to the research on the appropriate visual elements that could be utilised in the mural like colour, typography choices, setting, textures and mediums.

Several concepts were made as seen in the GIF, many ideas had to be scaled back and watered down to just one interactive element due to time constrains and the mural being maintained overtime.

The work mainly utilised the colours blue (for calmness) and gold (for success), these colours were identified and tested through secondary research found on colour theory. The added texture was to add an interactive element to the mural to promote user engagement through touching the three dimensional leaves. The materials used were interior wall paint, a gold leaf pen and wall putty (used for the three dimensional element). The aim of this mural was to calm and destress the user and to allow them to feel grounded through the use of these visual elements.

1.5m in length along an interior wall panel.

Textured paint made with wall putty for added texture

Shades of blue using interior paint for calmness.

Gold pen outline to evoke feelings of success.

The mural took 2 days to complete in total.