Kent Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris has staged an interactive ‘mini show’ on Twitter to explore what graphic design can reveal about people’s perception of law.
Fourteen graphic designs were tweeted by Professor Perry-Kessaris throughout the course of one day with a request for thoughts and comments.
Professor Perry-Kessaris said: ‘I set myself the task of developing designs that were each intended to communicate, and facilitate discussion about, a widely perceived characteristic of law.
‘My self-imposed constraints were to use no text other than the word ‘law’ within the design, with a short title and background note on the reverse; and that the design must fit on an A5 card.’
The show successfully engaged the Twitter community with Professor Perrry-Kessaris reporting more than 2,800 page views. In addition, 800 views were recorded on Professor Perry-Kessaris’s blog with designs called ‘Citadel’ and ‘Lost & Found’ provoking the highest number of comments.
Professor Perry-Kessaris said: ‘This was a fascinating experience, great fun and even a touch exhilarating. I had no idea if anyone would even notice it was happening, so I am thrilled that the response was so positive. My next plan is to visually communicate existing econo-legal research projects done by other academics, to see if their reach can be widened and/or deepened through graphic design.’
The exchange of tweets, has now been curated into a Storify. A Vimeo video has also been created offering a virtual private view of the designs. The online experiment was conducted as part of a Design for Visual Communication course that Professor Perry-Kessaris is taking at the London College of Communication. She is also the coordinator of a project called Thinking into | about practice which asks academics to use images and texts to reflect upon their experience in the field of law and development.
Professor Perry-Kessaris’s current research focuses on what happens when ‘law and development’, is reconsidered as econo-socio-legal development, and the potential of graphic design as a method of communication in that process. Read more about her research and publications on her staff profile page.