The Thesis
My senior thesis was based on a personal experience of a culture clash I encountered when I moved from Miami, FL to Savannah, GA. My problem was that many people in Georgia had a preconceived idea of what a typical Latino was and I didn't fit under their stereotype. By way of a personal narrative, I set out to bring light to the fact that there exists a spectrum of differences within the Hispanic-American community by exploring my experience in Miami, Puertorican, and Cuban culture.
The Process
Was all about exploration, a play with concepts and iteration after iteration. A lot of research was collected from multiple facets of my thesis to try to encompass the culture I wanted to portray. I looked to social media, made mind maps to try and narrow down a precise message and created typographic visuals to help pinpoint content that naturally stood out.
I played with concepts involving the meaning of words, pronunciations, and food differentiations between each culture.
The most intriguing part of the process was seeing how, with time, the project began forming itself into what it had to become.
With the process, the structure of information almost naturally began to unfold making the content clearer for me to see and easier to translate for the user.
The Book
After the research and iteration phase, I decided the best form to exhibit this information was through a book. I crafted a storyboard that arranged the information chronologically according to my life. Multiple mock-ups were created until I reached the final product. The content is an interweaving of historical and familial facts, fun facts, plays between word and phrase translations, pronunciations, recipes, and geographic information.
The final book was crafted with a handmade cover, cut outs and a pull out page. Check out the digital version here.
The Exhibit
Interactivity was an important concept for me from the beginning so I developed multiple ways in which my audience could interact with the content. At the exhibit I integrated a large part of the Latino dance culture with a teach-yourself-salsa board, Spanish-English translation cut outs within the book and a family timeline interweaving the birth dates of my grandparents with historical events—to put everthing into perspective.
IN THE END, my thesis reaffirmed three things: my intrigue between the user-product experience, my infatuation with the life that exists within process and my love of culture and identity.
The following images are select spreads from the book.
