LIGATURE 32
Creative Direction, Event Planning, Team Managment
*In collaboration with Emily Swenson
Ligature is the University of Florida's annual design symposium featuring internationally recognized designers who lead lectures, workshops, portfolio reviews, and a juried exhibition of student design work. For the 30th year (2 years were skipped in the numbering) of Ligature, we had the pleasure of hosting Mr. Razzle Dazzle himself, Zipeng Zhu, as well as Polymode Studio's Randi Hadi and Brian Johnson.
As Co-Creative Director of Ligature, I was responsible for overseeing every aspect of the event. This included creating a visual system to apply across the gallery, social media, merchandise, etc.; arranging guest speakers, workshops, and portfolio reviews; preparation of the gallery and management of work; as well as coordinating between Vox Graphis, the UF School of Art + Art History, and UF Designers, the sponsors of the event.
This year's Ligature centered on the idea of the "creative spark" and the celebration of explosive creativity.
We wanted to use this years event to recognize the joy of creation and the ways in which unbridled creativity can lead to innovative and inspiring work. This theme encourages individuals to embrace themselves, their ideas, and their imagination, and to experiment without fear of failure.
One of the essential parts of Ligature is a juried exhibition of student design work. This year the exhibition was juried by Randa Hadi, Brian Johnson, and Zipeng Zhu, and featured 31 pieces of student work, selected from a pool of over 100.
Apart from the exhibition, we had the pleasure of hosting Zipeng Zhu for our keynote lecture this year. The lecture was titled Getting Confident, and Zipeng discussed his experience as a Queer Immigrant Designer and how he has been able to grow his voice and his brand.
Along with Zipeng's lecture, we had a workshop hosted by Randa Hadi and Brian Johnson from Polymode. There they taught us their method of Poetic Research and gave us the opportunity to experiment with this method.
