Observe & Quantify: Taking a Shot at Travel
In thinking about this project, I explored three different types of data collection including personal data collection, experience or event documentation, and raw or tabletop data. Collecting different types of data helped me to narrow down my curiosities and come to a decision on what type of data I was most interested in. I started this process by creating mind maps.
After careful contemplation, I decided to focus my project around my shot glass collection. I have been collecting shot glasses since the age of 16 — these shot glasses not only represent my love of travel and curiosity about the parts of the world I have not yet seen, but also my relationship with my father. My father used to travel a lot for work when I was younger, and when I started my collection, he would never return from his travels without bringing home a new, unique shot glass for me along with stories of the places he visited.
This collection and exploration held a strong connection with some photos I had taken of my father’s old passports a couple of years ago. I took these photos just to focus on the beauty and aesthetic of the colors, typefaces, stamps, and handwritten notes. For this project, these photographs played a big role in inspiring my final product for this project — passport-sized booklets highlighting the places that meant the most to me through the lens of my data collection.
In creating my passport-sized booklets, I experimented with multiple styles, aesthetics, materials, and tools. I started my experimentation in the physical form, due to technical issues, by trying out different types of paper, booklet sizes, stamps, and Japanese washi tapes.
Once I was able to, I started my digital experimentation. Using personal and found images of New York and India, the places I chose to highlight, I created collages. I then used these collages to create bitmaps, gradient maps, and more.
Although the bitmapped versions of these collages had a certain beauty to them, using gradient maps on these collages ended up giving me more room to find a way to visualize the essence and personality of each of these places through my personal point of view. Therefore, I ended up using gradient maps to explore the visualization of each place and decided to pull inspiration from the American passport by including quotes about each place that I connected with.
For my final deliverable, I decided to print on textured, pastel paper, which I then used to saddle stitch each booklet using white thread to match the typography in each spread. Once I had bound the booklets, I decided to use cotton-based paper to cover the stitching on the outside of the booklets and add another element that would tie the booklets together.
