COUNTER:FORM



For our BFA senior exhibition, a group of my peers & I wanted to do something vastly different from past years. COUNTER:FORM is a declaration to counter convention, and form something entirely new outside the environment we’ve been learning design in for the past 3 years. Our aesthetic direction references counter-cultural movements and embraces the uncertainty & expression of spray paint as a medium and what’s to come in our futures. 

My individual focuses were on title wall design and production, as well as being the sole designer, curator, and manager for our Instagram.
Title wall on deinstall day
In lieu of a traditional guest book, we wanted to invite our guests into our world and encourage them to “make their mark” directly on the title wall itself. Over time, guests began to express themselves more creatively.






Process




For title wall, I prioritized a feeling of balance between our 3 identity colors with the primary (green) having the biggest spotlight. Previous iterations from my peers experimented with the quantity of spray paint, but felt complicated. I felt the best route was to use minimal spray paint, but let the physicality of the material speak for itself with scale.

Going into production and install, I carefully mapped out dimensions of the title wall design to faithfully bring it to life.
Title wall chosen direction

Dimension mapping examples

For our Instagram, the main design idea was expanding on the graffiti motif. We created small doodles (that we eventually incorporated back into title wall), and I manipulated our portraits to feel as though they had been made using a stencil and spray paint.

I broke up our posts into the following eras for pacing:

1. Teaser
2. Intro
3. Designer spotlights with sneak peeks of work
4. Interlude
5. Retrospective

Posts incorporated larger quantities of color over time to symbolize the exhibition coming to fruition.


 

Designer spotlight examples




2024 calendar

©2025


kianalvannest@gmail.com