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The Warmth Beyond Consumerism: A Story of Second-Hand Trading Among International Students  

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The Warmth Beyond Consumerism: A Story of Second-Hand Trading Among International Students  

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At the end of last year, the peak season for graduate students leaving the UK for home was in full swing. As a result, Chinese social media platforms were flooded with posts selling second-hand items. With the surge in supply during graduation season, prices dropped even lower than usual. The only common requirement was that buyers had to pick up their purchases within the next couple of days.

It was during the later stages of my Unit 9 project that I suddenly found myself in urgent need of a printer. Browsing through social media, I came across a listing from a girl selling hers for just £10, with the condition that it had to be picked up that same day. I contacted her around noon, and she told me that she would be flying home at 5 PM. If I could collect the printer by 3 PM, she said, I could have it for free.

I was surprised but immediately set off to meet her. That day, London was cold. By 1 PM, the sky had already darkened, and a light but chilly drizzle had begun to fall. The rain slowed down traffic, and I worried about being late. However, before I even arrived, she was already waiting at the bus stop.

When I finally got there, I saw a petite Chinese girl standing in the rain without an umbrella, just a hood pulled over her head. She handed me a large all-in-one printer, carefully wrapped and packaged to make it easier to carry. She spoke softly, yet even in the rain, she took the time to patiently explain how to install and use it. I felt guilty and insisted on paying her, but she refused, saying she only wanted the printer that had accompanied her for the past year to have a second life.

On Chinese social media platforms, international students rarely use their personal accounts to sell second-hand items, preferring instead to create temporary profiles with default avatars and nicknames—often "Momo"—for privacy reasons. As a result, the marketplace is filled with an army of identical-looking "Momo" sellers, all seemingly anonymous. Yet in that moment, standing in front of her, I felt the warmth of a real person. Behind these identical, faceless profiles were individuals who had lived, struggled, and thrived in the UK, each with their own unique yet relatable experiences.

She spoke hurriedly, occasionally glancing at her phone, likely thinking about her flight and her luggage. She had formed an attachment to her belongings and hoped they would continue to be useful. She even took a moment to consider whether it would be convenient for me, a stranger with no financial exchange involved, to carry such a large box home. What connected us at that moment wasn’t just a simple transaction or a social obligation, but rather a shared identity—we were both part of the same community, here for the same purpose, facing the same challenges, and navigating the same transitions.

In the world of international students, belongings come and go just like their owners. They arrive, then leave, and the things they briefly used are passed on to the next person in need. But this isn’t the cold, transactional behavior of consumerism. Sometimes, the exchange happens without any financial motive, driven purely by a sense of connection and empathy within the community. These items, embedded with shared experiences, serve as silent links between strangers who might never meet again.

As I left, the rain grew heavier. She hurried off, quickly saying goodbye. Watching her walk away, I wondered if I was the last person she would see in London before she left.

I called out, "Thank you! Safe travels!"

She turned back, smiled, and said, "Thank you! I hope everything goes well for you in London!"

To me, when consumer behavior is placed within a transient, nomadic community, it takes on a completely different nature from the kind of consumerism we typically see. The dynamics shift, forming relationships built on trust and warmth rather than pure economic exchange. The widespread, almost universal practice of second-hand trading among international students is more than just a financial transaction; it is a cultural phenomenon, a silent, unspoken rule that fosters connection and support in a foreign land. Sometimes, it transcends financial interests altogether, turning into an act of pure kindness and generosity, a way for students with fleeting connections to extend goodwill to one another in a place far from home.

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Granovetter, M.S. (1973) ‘The strength of weak ties’, The American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), pp. 1360-1380. Available at: [Stable URL].

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Granovetter, M.S. (1973) ‘The strength of weak ties’, The American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), pp. 1360-1380. Available at: [Stable URL].

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Of course, the experience of second-hand trading is not always pleasant. Due to the lack of a standardized platform specifically designed for international students to match supply and demand, various disputes and confusion often arise. Some people even choose to discard their unused items or give them away for free to acquaintances just to avoid the hassle. However, their friends may not always be the ones who truly need these items, leading to inefficiencies in their reuse and ultimately resulting in waste caused by mismatched information.

I believe that in such a large community, a widespread trading practice like this has not received enough attention or been properly structured. Through this unit, I hope not only to create a platform that better regulates transactions and efficiently connects supply with demand but also to establish a space where second-hand items with emotional value from the study abroad experience can be shared. This way, the community can become more closely connected through the circulation of these items, fostering shared experiences and interactions among its members.

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Turn data collection into an experience with Typeform. Create beautiful online forms, surveys, quizzes, and so much more. Try it for FREE.

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Turn data collection into an experience with Typeform. Create beautiful online forms, surveys, quizzes, and so much more. Try it for FREE.

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In terms of research methodology, I will approach it from two main aspects.

Firstly, in order to build a practical and user-friendly website, I need to conduct sociological research on the target audience and similar existing platforms. This part of the study aims to align the website’s actual functionalities and performance with the needs of its intended users.

Secondly, I will conduct design research focusing on web design and website promotion. Once the website’s functions and target audience’s needs are clearly defined, I will explore how to use a more relevant and effective design, including illustration styles, to better promote the platform to its intended users and enhance their overall user experience.

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This study will employ various sociological field research methods to ensure that the second-hand trading platform is designed to meet the actual needs of its target users while also enhancing user experience and engagement through effective design and promotional strategies. The research is divided into two main parts: target audience research and design & communication research. The methodology integrates participant observation, in-depth interviews, survey research, social network analysis, ethnographic research, and mixed-methods research to gather comprehensive and reliable data.

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Target Audience Research

To develop a second-hand trading platform that aligns with user needs, I will conduct target audience research, focusing on international students' consumption habits, second-hand trading models, community interactions, and usage preferences. Additionally, I will analyze the applicability of existing second-hand trading platforms (such as eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Shpock) within the international student community. This research will incorporate the following sociological methods:

1-Participant Observation

I will actively join existing second-hand trading communities (such as WeChat, WhatsApp, and Facebook groups) to observe user interaction patterns, trading behaviors, major challenges, and trust mechanisms within these platforms. This method allows me to directly understand the actual needs and difficulties faced by international students in second-hand transactions (Goffman, 1961; Whyte, 1943).

2-In-Depth Interviews

By conducting semi-structured interviews with international students, community organizers, and users with prior experience in second-hand trading, I aim to gain insights into their decision-making processes, trust concerns, pricing strategies, usage pain points, and potential areas for improvement. Compared to surveys, in-depth interviews provide a richer and more nuanced understanding of user experiences and social contexts (Kvale, 1996; Hochschild, 2012).

3-Survey Research

To quantify research findings, I will design structured surveys to collect data on the trading behaviors of international students, including preferred platforms, transaction frequency, key factors influencing purchase decisions (such as price, safety, and convenience), and willingness to adopt a new platform. This approach will enable the collection of large-scale data to inform platform design.

In this section, I plan to collect 100-200 survey samples from the primary target audience. Additionally, to gain a holistic understanding of the differences between international students and local consumers, I will conduct a separate second-hand trading behavior survey targeting local residents and students as a control group, with a target sample size of 50-100 responses (Babbie, 2010; Smith, 1990).

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1-Broader the group

-can I make this project‘s a broader audience?

-Is it possible that this project includes all international people living in the UK, not just students?

2-How to Make the IPS Project Better Support My Professional Portfolio?

To strengthen my portfolio as a commercial illustrator, I will ensure that my illustration work is an integral part of the project. Here are key areas of focus:

Incorporating Illustration Work: Integrating my illustrations within the project will help showcase my artistic style and commercial potential.

Practicing Web Development Skills: Developing the website as part of this project will enhance my technical proficiency, making my portfolio more versatile.

Enhancing Commercial Marketing Research Skills: Conducting in-depth market research will improve my ability to understand industry trends and target audiences.

Exploring the Connection Between Commercial Value and Illustration: Thinking strategically about how illustration can add value to commercial projects will refine my approach to professional opportunities.

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1. How can I broaden and enhance my idea?

2. What other research methods would be helpful?

3. Do you have any advice on the implementation/realization of my project?

4. What resources can I access to support my project? （skill supporting or funds）

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 How I Collected 200 Valid Survey Responses through Design & Consumer Psychology

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 How I Collected 200 Valid Survey Responses through Design & Consumer Psychology

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One of the first and most pressing challenges I faced in this project was gathering enough quantitative survey data to support any meaningful sociological analysis. As I quickly realised, reaching 200 valid responses required far more than simply asking friends or classmates. I needed to persuade strangers—people outside my immediate network—to actively engage with my research.

To tackle this, I turned the act of survey collection into a design-led experiment grounded in consumer psychology and advertising theory.

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To build a rigorous methodological foundation, I audited an advertising psychology course from Goldsmiths’ Business School, where I learned how advertising design leverages behavioural insights. This course introduced me to a range of classic psychological models, including Robert Cialdini’s Principles of Influence, which became the core of my design strategy. I focused particularly on:

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Using Design to Test Psychological Theories in the Field

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Using Design to Test Psychological Theories in the Field

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I transformed the design of my survey flyers into a live application of these theories—each version of the poster tested a different approach to audience persuasion.

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Creating interesting ad effects using well-known classic visual images

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Creating interesting ad effects using well-known classic visual images

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Red Pill / Blue Pill — The Cultural Symbol Hook

Inspired by The Matrix, I used the well-known red vs blue pill symbolism, especially familiar in Western cultural contexts, to draw attention. I designed two QR codes, each linked to different-language versions of the same survey—Chinese and English—and assigned them to the red and blue pills held by Morpheus.

Goal: Capture attention through shared cultural reference

Design Logic: People resonate with known stories; this design anchors the concept of “choice”

Theoretical Support:

Curiosity Arousal Theory: unusual visual cues draw in viewers

Symbolic Consumption (Baudrillard): meaning-laden symbols increase engagement through cultural familiarity

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Use font size to create a visual center of gravity to attract customers

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Use font size to create a visual center of gravity to attract customers

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“Have You Ever Filled Out a £50 Survey?” — Cognitive Dissonance Trigger

This poster used giant typography and extreme simplicity. Against a black background, the phrase “£50” stood out in bold white lettering, with smaller text below reading: “Have you ever filled out a £50 questionnaire?” The real story? I had accidentally signed up for a paid survey tool that charged me nearly £100 in subscription fees. I turned that mistake into a provocative headline.

Goal: Generate dissonance to spark curiosity

Design Logic: The absurdity of a £50 survey challenges expectations, creating tension viewers want to resolve

Theoretical Support:

Cognitive Dissonance Theory: the mental discomfort provokes interaction to “make sense” of the situation

Availability Heuristic (Kahneman & Tversky): bold monetary figures trigger disproportionate attention

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Candy Reciprocity — The Guilt-Triggered Participation

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Candy Reciprocity — The Guilt-Triggered Participation

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In this version, I attached individual sweets to each flyer and left them in high-traffic student areas. When someone took a piece of candy—without being asked—they would subconsciously feel a sense of obligation to “return the favour” by completing the survey.

Goal: Leverage the reciprocity principle to prompt voluntary action

Design Logic: By giving something small first, participants feel morally nudged to reciprocate—even without social pressure

Theoretical Support:

Reciprocity Principle: small gifts elicit disproportionate responses

Foot-in-the-Door Effect: taking candy is a small step, scanning a QR is the next logical step

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hotographic and video documentation of meaningful personal objects from interviewees was collected as part of the quantitative study

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hotographic and video documentation of meaningful personal objects from interviewees was collected as part of the quantitative study

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The Goggles – “Welcome to Pine Point” (2011)

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The Goggles – “Welcome to Pine Point” (2011)

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Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge (aka The Goggles) created an interactive web documentary that unfolds like a nostalgic scrapbook​

. The site explores an abandoned mining town through memories, incorporating vintage photos, handwritten letters, and video interviews. Users navigate a linear story but can explore artifacts and rearrange on-screen objects, mimicking the feel of paging through an old family album

. This award-winning project shows how a warm, retro aesthetic and personal storytelling can merge in web design.

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"It was the first place I went alone without my family. So I just looked it up one night when I remembered that I had been there, and it was gone. It wasn't even on the map anymore.... That was our starting point: what happened to this town?"

Michael Simons, Creator, in Nieman Storyboard

What if your hometown no longer existed? Pine Point was a small town in Canada's Northwest Territories. Built next to a lead and zinc mine, Pine Point never reached more than 1,200 inhabitants. Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge, also known as "The Goggles," explore the town story through the memories of its former inhabitants.

In Welcome to Pine Point, the town's short history is laid out in a scrapbook format featuring videos, interviews, ephemera, and other artifacts. Users can interact with the documentary by rearranging objects on the page just as they would with their own archives. While the story is laid out on a linear path, audience members can move between the town's past livelihood and its present state of total abandonment. Inspired by a Pine Point website made by a former resident, Welcome to Pine Point is an exploration into how people access the time and space of the past and what it takes to build those gateways to memory.

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"Welcome to Pine Point" profiles an abandoned mining town in Canada's Northwest Territories, drawing on the memories of its former inhabitants and showcasing the ephemera they saved.

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Aaron Koblin & Chris Milk – Collaborative Web Experiments

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Aaron Koblin & Chris Milk – Collaborative Web Experiments

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This duo has produced inventive interactive websites that integrate art and story. For example, The Johnny Cash Project(2010) is a “global collective art project” where fans contributed hand-drawn portraits to create a music video for Johnny Cash’s final song​

. Each frame of the video was drawn by a different fan, and the site continuously updates the “living” mosaic of illustrations. The result is an ever-evolving, warm tribute that combines personal storytelling (fans’ memories of Cash) with experimental web technology. Another example is The Wilderness Downtown (2010), an interactive film for Arcade Fire – it used the viewer’s childhood home (via Google Street View) to evoke nostalgia, literally integrating the user’s story into the experience. These projects show how conceptual web design can be deeply personal, blending illustration, music, and narrative.

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A Chance To Work With Johnny Cash Beyond The ‘Grave’

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A new interactive website called The Johnny Cash Project brings to life his final studio recording, “Ain’t No Grave.” It also gives his fans an opportunity to connect with Cash through digital art.

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Museum of Broken Relationships : Dražen Grubišić on love, social media and the significance of…

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In 2006, two former lovers, Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić introduced an installation featuring items from their past relationship to…

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Co-founded in 2006 by Croatian artists Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić, this museum is dedicated to the “wreckage of lost love”​

theguardian.com

. It began as a modest installation of personal breakup relics (from the founders’ own split and contributions by friends) with brief captions about their significance​

lynettealh.medium.com

. The concept resonated globally – it grew into a permanent museum in Zagreb and a traveling collection that has toured 56 exhibitions across 6 continents, featuring objects and stories from 33 countries​

lynettealh.medium.com

. Everyday items – a pair of fake plastic breasts, a frisbee, a wedding dress – take on “a strong emotional charge” when paired with the anonymous donor’s story​

theguardian.com

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theguardian.com

. Each object is displayed with a text explaining its role in a relationship’s rise or demise, often just a few poignant sentences. The effect is profoundly narrative: visitors vicariously experience joy, heartbreak, nostalgia, and healing through these objects. The Museum of Broken Relationships shows how personal souvenirs and even junk (a phone, an old shoe, a love letter) can become artifacts of human emotion when framed as stories.

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Museums and artists have also explored themes of lost or found objects and their emotional resonance. For instance, British artist Cornelia Parker curated a 2016 group exhibition at London’s Foundling Museum where 60 creators contributed a “found object that means something to them.” This show invited the public to consider the stories behind things we stumble upon or misplace​

theguardian.com

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theguardian.com

. Similarly, the Foundling Museum (which itself holds poignant 18th-century tokens left by mothers with their babies) has run crowd-sourced projects asking people to share objects they rediscovered or saved. These exhibitions highlight how lost items – a toy found on the street, a long-forgotten trinket in the attic – can carry intense personal meaning once their story is told​

theguardian.com

. By showcasing such lost-and-found mementos alongside their narratives, curators create a space where visitors reflect on attachment, memory, and serendipity in their own lives.

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Lost and found: share photos and stories about the objects that have changed you

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To coincide with Cornelia Parker’s latest exhibition, we’d like to see photos of objects close to your heart and the stories behind them

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구본창: 사물의 초상 - 워크룸

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그래픽 디자인 스튜디오, 출판사

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워크룸 프레스 공식 웹사이트 - 워크룸

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그래픽 디자인 스튜디오, 출판사

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그래픽 디자인 스튜디오, 출판사

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그래픽 디자인 스튜디오

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그래픽 디자인 스튜디오, 출판사

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그래픽 디자인 스튜디오

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그래픽 디자인 스튜디오, 출판사

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미나 페르호넨 디자인 여정: 기억의 순환 - 워크룸

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그래픽 디자인 스튜디오, 출판사

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“Self-restraint, Endured”

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Through Porcelain Shards and Hundreds of Threads, Helena Hafemann Shatters Notions of Value

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Helena Hafemann is driven by the transfer of value and how it seems to activate when faced with loss or destruction.

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Beccy Ridsdel is an artist from York, United Kingdom. Known for her ceramics, Ridsdel creates fun, playful artworks using bone china, clay and various objects like surgical instruments(!)

In her series, Art/Craft, Ridsdel opens a discussion regarding one of the most important questions of the art world. What is art? Trying to combine art with craft, meaning with technical skills and beauty with comfort, the artist doesn't hope to answer to this question, but to make us think. "This work was based on the (age-old) art/craft debate. I know we all have our own opinions, but I think craft is technical and art is meaningful (or a reason for being made, beyond the thing itself) Overly simplistic? Probably, but for ceramicists this can be a big issue as ceramics is almost universally seen as craft regardless.I chose to make a series of definitely craft objects - bone china plates, mugs, jugs - and 'dissect' them to see what was beneath. Turns out, they are craft through and through. This work was an installation, set up as a lab experiment in progress, complete with scalpels, lab coats, needles and a microscope. Piles of dicarded, cut-up craft objects lay about the desk, some with their innards seeping out, others rearranged, Frankenstein-style.By doing this, I was turning a table full of craft objects into an artwork in its own right, it had a point beyond the technique, beyond the things themselves," explains the artist.

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Art-Sheep Features: The Surgical Ceramics of Beccy Ridsdel - Art-Sheep

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Beccy Ridsdel is an artist from York, United Kingdom. Known for her ceramics, Ridsdel creates fun, playful artworks using bone china, clay and various objects like surgical instruments(!) In her series, Art/Craft, Ridsdel opens a discussion regarding one of the most important questions of the art world. What is art?

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Smooth visual transitions: images glide with mouse drag / miniature vehicle animation / typographic reveal on scroll.

Logo and typography are designed to be eye-catching and memorable.

Visual standout: clean, minimalist graphic layout that enhances legibility.

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Benjamin hardman personal website- Typography & Layout Excellence

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Benjamin hardman personal website- Typography & Layout Excellence

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The typography layout is finely tuned to the content: font sizes and line lengths are adjusted according to the artwork dimensions, showing a high level of visual sensitivity.Overall, the site balances aesthetic clarity with functional information.

Personal Introduction

Size & Fit Guide

Q&A

Selection Tips

Studio Services Overview

Contact Information

Decorative Art for Purchase

Privacy Policy

External Social Media Links

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Benjamin’s fine-art print collection is offered in four different sizes: S, M, L & XL. You can purchase each fine-art piece as a loose print or in a choice of oak or white premium wooden frames. All orders will be shipped from the print studio with extreme care in packaging to ensure safe delivery. The current coll

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Full-screen immersive environment: Large background scenes shift as the user scrolls, creating a sense of being “inside” the escape room — highly aligned with the core theme of immersive puzzle-based experiences.

Clear function zoning: Users can switch between rooms and reserve different games based on scene transitions.

Timetable interaction: As users scroll through each room’s booking calendar, the color gradually lightens — metaphorically moving from darkness to light. This transition mirrors the emotional arc of escape rooms: from tension to resolution, from confinement to freedom.

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Content strategy: Focused on showcasing unique vintage goods, it mirrors the concept of my own project but shifts away from personal storytelling to emphasize aesthetic uniqueness and product character.

Commercial advantage: Unlike emotionally-driven storytelling, visual distinctiveness encourages stronger purchasing decisions — increasing commercial viability.

Web design style: Grid-based visual layout with unified product imagery gives users the impression of abundance and variety. This supports the site’s identity as "a great big vintage company."

Unique dynamic feature: A rapidly counting inventory number (eventually stopping at 10,000) reinforces a sense of scale and thriving activity.

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About Us - Vintage & Used Furniture and Decor | Chairish

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Chairish is the design lover’s indispensable online source for unique decor, art, furniture and home decorating inspiration.

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Narrative Agency & the Power to Observe Embedded in Everyday Objects

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Narrative Agency & the Power to Observe Embedded in Everyday Objects

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There's nothing so tragic or boring it can't be transformed into a curious adventure - when transfigured by Sophie Calle's extraordinary gaze, that is. Blurring the distinction between fiction and reality, the work of France's most celebrated and provocative conceptual artist injects the landscape of normal life with a heightened sense of narrative and epic drama. Even the inconsequential coincidences of everyday become major plot twists in the strange, stylish, and cinematic world of Sophie Calle.

Calle's voyeuristic and exploratory artworks, which utilise aspects of performance, photography, text, film, and installations, have attracted criticism over the years as she's tested and breached the boundaries of public and private life, excavating her own experience and often invading the privacy of strangers. Her elaborate art assignments have imperilled her in various ways as she's invited passers-by to sleep in her bed ("The Sleepers", 1979), trailed an unknown man across Europe ( Suite Vénitienne, 1980), and publicly exposed her rawest moments of grief and heartbreak ( Douleur Exquise, 2005).

Now, as her controversial work, (1999) is published for the first time as a stand-alone work by Siglio Press, we look again at this seminal work and consider the ways in which Sophie Calle has turned absence, risk, and mundanity into compelling and elaborate art experiments.

ART IS AN ADVENTURE

Drawing on the conventions of psychogeography and performance art, Calle's "games" often involve responding to a set of arbitrary rules. As with the work Marina Abramović, Calle's practice is about enduring and connecting with the present moment and all it has to offer, but they're also driven by a sense of mischief, adventure, and a profound curiosity about the apparatuses of desire, identity, mystery, fantasy, and intimacy.

"On Monday, February 16 1981, I was hired as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks in a Venetian hotel. I was assigned 12 bedrooms on the fourth floor, " she writes in the opening of the book. "In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and observed, through details, lives which remained unknown to me. On Friday, March 6, the job came to an end."

At the heart of this premise is a mystery of her own creation, pre-ordained to reach no conclusion. While it hangs on the framework of a detective novel, there's no crime at the centre of the plot - just the artists' self-imposed assignment to examine and observe the artefacts of the unknown guests who happen to be staying in these particular rooms during the period in which she is present. The work is driven entirely by Calle's curiosity about the partially revealed lives of these random strangers, and her willingness to abide by the rules of a game of her own making.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MUNDANITY

Having been allocated the care of 12 rooms on the fourth floor of Hotel C, she smuggled her camera and tape recorder to work among her cleaning utensils and, moving from room to room, documented her findings in the manner of a forensic scientist or a private detective.

Alone in the guests' private quarters, Calle cleaned and tidied while also methodically inspecting their possessions and recording her observations. She examined and tried on strangers' clothes, inhaled their perfume, read their diaries and unsent postcards, rifled through their bins, and inspected their soiled sheets. Arranging and photographing these "clues", she speculated on the identities of the absent guests.

Through the transformative power of her own curiosity and imagination, she not only converts the monotony of the labour itself into a cerebral and creative undertaking, but her speculations about the occupants of the rooms confer upon them a sense of mystery and intrigue they would be no-doubt lacking outside of the circumstances of her game.

Entering the room of a couple she has previously overheard loudly making love, she writes: "I go in... In the suitcase, there are two pairs of women's panties, tampons, a pair of men's underpants, a tube, and a jar of Vaseline. The bedroom is a mess." And the normal detritus of a shared double room immediately invested with the drama and suspense of a scene from a film.

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

"He has finished the apples and oranges. The wastebasket is full of peels," Calle records on Wednesday, February 18 at 9.40am. "He's still on page 198 of Somerset Maugham's book." No detail is too small, nothing is beneath her notice.

She excavates the minutiae of the scene like a criminologist combing for clues. And these details - details that might otherwise seem mundane - take on an evocative new aspect when related in this way. Just the act of documenting the contents of the bin and the slow progress he's making with his book invests these otherwise inconsequential observations with the mystery of a Hitcock plot twist. There are no accidents and nothing is inconsequential. It invites us to not only picture the habits and preoccupations of the unknown guest but to wonder if these actually are somehow clues. If so, what is the mystery?

"He is gone," she concludes the following day. "He has left his orange peels in the wastebasket, three fresh eggs on the windowsill, and the remains of a croissant which I polish off. I shall miss him."

ABSENCE IS ALLURING

Throughout the book, Calle develops theories about the identities of the guests by tracing the contours of their absence... the impressions of their bodies in the many vacated, unmade beds, the discarded detritus in their wastepaper bins, the garments hung in the wardrobes, devoid of bodies.

Absence is a vital component of Sophie Calle's work in a variety of ways. From the mystery figure at the centre of The Address Book (2021) to the lost lover who inspired Take Care of Yourself (2012), missing or absent persons leave a negative space that becomes the template around which the work takes shape. Yet, more often than not, these central figures are simply arbitrary placeholders whose fascination lays only in the unoccupied space they leave vacant.

On the occasion when she's disturbed by a guest reentering their room, it registers as an intrusion rather than an opportunity to gain clarity on her suppositions. In one description she writes: "Sounds in the hallway. I close the diary. As I put it down, someone enters the room. I pick up my rags, my bucket (where my camera and tape recorder are hidden), lower my gaze, and leave. He is dressed the way I thought; he is about 28, with a weak face. I try to forget him."

While The Hotel focuses on making deductions about strangers, Calle resists absolute conclusions. Here, there is no space for the bodily reality of the guests whose private lives we are probing, to the extent that Calle actively attempts to "forget" this incursion. Perhaps she fears their presence would derail her project or intrude on the process of speculation. Maybe she wants to defer the denouement of the mystery she's constructed. Perhaps she wants to retain the power and privilege of the detective's distance. "Hospitals and graveyards are not places that paralyse me," she told The Guardian in 2017. "They inspire me and my work, it's what has always been attracting me - absence, missing, death..."

BE A VOYEUR

If art is "the thing no one asked you to do", then The Hotel is "the thing no one consented to Sophie Calle to do."

Like much of her work, this piece raises questions that are almost more pertinent today than they even were when she embarked on the project in 1981. What constitutes an invasion of privacy? What constitutes art? Calle's art practice continuously challenges pre-conceptions of these definitions. She follows her obsessions where they lead her, accompanying the plot of the story she's initiated until it reaches its conclusion, regardless of what boundaries she breaches along the way.

To some critics, it constituted an indefensible violation. Writing in , Yve-Alain Bois condemned The Hotel as an "absolute dismissal of privacy". To others, the morally reprehensible (and possibly prosecutable) nature of Calle's actions are transfigured as they undergo the process of aestheticisation. Slippage occurs between real life and art and the distinction begins to feel less important. And maybe this is the point at which Calle's work really becomes thrilling... the moment when fantasy encroaches on reality in a tangible way and intrigue takes hold.
Take a look through the gallery above for a glimpse at Sophie Calle's The Hotel, which is published by Siglio Press and is available now

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Lessons from Sophie Calle: How to turn your life into a work of art

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There's nothing so tragic or boring it can't be transformed into a curious adventure - when transfigured by Sophie Calle's extraordinary gaze, that is. Blurring the distinction between fiction and reality, the work of France's most celebrated and provocative conceptual artist injects the landscape of normal life with a heightened sense of narrative and epic drama.

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remaking old things to be a new production

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remaking old things to be a new production

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Each piece in this collection has been carefully curated to bring a touch of character and warmth to your home. We love using lamps to add a warm glow to those dark corners of home, whether as a bedside table lamp, in the living room or even on the kitchen work surface. Our lamps are made using reclaimed stoneware, e

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Concept: Humanized, warm-toned data visuals incorporating hand-drawn illustration elements. This design uses contradiction — soft visuals vs hard data — to neutralize the cold, utilitarian tone often associated with analytics.

Impact: The integration of clashing elements enhances the artistic quality of the work, allowing for greater emotional resonance and accessibility in public-facing art.

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From an award-winning project comes an inspiring, collaborative book that makes data artistic, personal - and open to all.

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Poster Placement Strategy: Psychological Logic & Practical Execution

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Poster Placement Strategy: Psychological Logic & Practical Execution

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To ensure maximum visibility and psychological receptiveness, I applied a set of field-tested design principles for poster placement—each rooted in consumer behaviour theory, perception psychology, and environmental cognition.

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Calle disguised herself as a hotel maid, secretly entering guest rooms to observe their belongings and document what was left behind—each object forming a puzzle piece of the guest’s identity.

This resonates deeply with your platform:
I merely facilitating the sale of used goods, but rather, enabling the summoning of memories and meaning through second-hand objects.

In my platform’s “Emotional Object Archive,” users are similarly empowered to narrate the stories behind their belongings. This becomes a process of reassembling object → person → social connection.

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The French artist has attained celebrity-and attracted controversy-by pursuing the objects of her obsession. What is she really after?

In February, 1981, the French artist Sophie Calle took a job as a hotel maid in Venice. In the course of three weeks, with a camera and tape recorder hidden in her mop bucket, she recorded whatever she found in the rooms that she had been charged with cleaning. She looked through wallets and transcribed unsent postcards, photographed the contents of wastebaskets and inventoried the clothes hanging in closets. Her only rule, it seems, was to leave untouched any luggage that owners had had the foresight to lock. That is, unless they also left the luggage key, which, for Calle, was as good as an invitation.

The result of this invitation-or intrusion-is " The Hotel," a diary, organized by room number, that gathers together photographic documentation and meticulous, often droll observation. (In a set of drawers in Room 30: "socks, stockings, bras . . . very well equipped.") Calle first presented the project as an installation of large diptychs that paired images with text, and later turned it into a book. Now an English translation has been reissued by Siglio, in a clothbound edition with pages edged in gold.

It is an especially sturdy and opulent artifact for a project chiefly concerned with what is transient and ordinary-the ephemera of strangers. In an embroidered handbag apparently belonging to a Frenchwoman, Calle finds five hundred and forty-five francs and a sixteen-year-old telegram sent from Chicago that reads "What is going on darling?" In Room 12, where two Viennese men are staying, she discovers a brass candlestick, dinner jackets, and a copy of Freud's " Totem and Taboo." A pair of Italian women, a truck driver and a sales clerk, have brought with them three porn magazines, two sets of flannel pajamas, and one Teddy bear. Calle photographs the chintzy hotel décor-Baroque wallpaper, dark bed frames, gilt sconces-in vibrant color, and smaller details in black-and-white: a pair of pressed Y-fronts in an open drawer, a handkerchief soaking in a glass of water, a steady accumulation of medicines on a nightstand, the crease on a bedsheet where someone has recently lain.

In the four decades since "The Hotel" first appeared, the imprint has remained Calle's preferred form; she uses the negative space where someone has been to discern their outline, like a painter whose sitters have got up and left. The absence of her subjects, as in the vacant rooms of hotel guests, is often literal. A 1983 project began when Calle found a stranger's address book in the street. She returned it to its owner, a documentary filmmaker, but not before photocopying its pages. In " The Address Book," she interviewed the man's contacts to form a composite portrait of him in absentia: "thirtyish, white hair"; "a little obsequious"; "a flat Woody Allen, with no pizzazz."

Sometimes the absent subject is Calle herself. In " Take Care of Yourself," perhaps her best-known piece and France's entry for the 2007 Venice Biennale, Calle invited a hundred and seven women to interpret a breakup e-mail that she'd received from a former boyfriend in whatever way their profession dictated. A corporate headhunter compiled a report on the ex's (limited) employability; ​​a clothing designer reimagined the message as a patterned crisp blue shirt with an organza collar. Calle's own response, if she has one, is not included, but through the words of the other women the shape of the relationship shades into view.

Although there is something oblique about these conceits, Calle is associated, above all, with acts of bald exposure. Her celebrity, which now extends far beyond France, has long been attached to charges of voyeurisme and exhibitionnisme (which have sometimes resulted in legal trouble). Yet, as "The Hotel" vividly shows, what Calle is really looking for is more enigmatic and compelling than other people's dirty laundry. Rather than erase the residue of human presence, as a "real" maid is expected to, Calle does the opposite, preserving every stain and scrap as a sign or symbol. But of what? This is the question at the heart of Calle's work, and the answer may hardly be the point; what interests her most is the seduction and projection involved in knowing another person-how fantasy intervenes in every attempt to see and be seen.

Calle was born in Paris in 1953. Her father, Robert, was a Camargue Protestant, an oncologist, and a respected collector of contemporary art; her mother, Monique Sindler, was Jewish, a journalist who wrote very little but smoked a lot. An improbable pair, they divorced when Sophie was three. As a teen-ager, Calle joined a Maoist group, and then briefly trained with Palestinian fedayeen in Lebanon-for the struggle but also, she has since said, to impress a boyfriend. In Paris, she began organizing with an underground abortion network and pursued a degree in sociology, before travelling for several years-selling vacuums, waitressing, cannabis farming, and working in a circus. Calle first tried photography at twenty-six, as a kind of compromise: it pleased her father but wasn't really "art," which had long felt incompatible with her militant commitments.

In Calle's first public exhibition, "The Sleepers," from 1979, the paradox of her gaze, its transgressive curiosity and its cool remove, is already apparent. For eight nights, she invited friends and strangers to each spend eight hours in her bed while she photographed and made notes about them: whether they snored, what they dreamed about. Her photographs convey extreme closeness-we see the curve of a naked buttock, a pale knee peeking out from below the covers-but the brevity of her handwritten captions dispels any eroticism in favor of sociological restraint. "At 6.45pm he sleeps deeply," she writes of one man. "He keeps throwing off the covers." If these are intimate revelations, what they reveal is just how little we can know about others, even those with whom we share our bed.

This sort of case study belongs to the larger French practice of proximate ethnography, which developed in the nineteen-eighties, when mass tourism had made the world feel smaller and faraway lands less exotic. The idea was to invert anthropology's othering gaze through a focus on the local and the banal. Books such as Marc Augé's " In the Metro" (1986), which tracked the subterranean rituals of the Parisian subway system, and Annie Ernaux's " Exteriors " (1993), a diary of scenes, objects, and overheard conversations, are impersonal databases of everydayness.

In "The Hotel," Calle sets out to provide a similar kind of inventory, as if working backward from so-called personal effects to find the cause-the story or the person-that produced them. Her authority as an ethnographer, and as an artist, depends on her acuity and discernment. She observes that an evening dress is "not silk but nylon," spots a fancy Pléiade edition of Taoist writings, and notes the guests' chosen cigarette brands: Marlboro, Camel, Gauloises, or Player's. In this catalogue of objects, there is narrative tension, too-between those things that people pack to feel at home (framed photos, slippers, a hot-water bottle) and those they bring precisely because they aren't (a brightly colored wig, a pair of platform mules, a bow tie).

Emptied of people, the black-and-white photographs have a crime-scene quality, which makes the past feel immediate. The question of what happened in the room before Calle entered it hovers ominously over the images. That everything is given the same amateurish attention by her camera-Calle's photographs, uncomposed and overexposed, can seem intentionally ugly-makes even a piece of orange peel suddenly seem suspicious, the accessory to a trauma that may or may not have taken place. This invitation to projection is one that Calle-melodramatic, morbid, a fabulist-willingly accepts. She is especially drawn to love letters, wedding photos, and any evidence of romantic disappointment. A single male traveller with a "beautifully ironed" nightgown that "clearly has never been worn" hanging over a chair is, in her telling, performing an elaborate mourning ceremony: "Exactly two years ago, M.L. spent the night in the Hotel C. with his wife. He has come back alone."

The temptation of speculation is even more seductive in another of Calle's projects from the same time, " Suite Vénitienne," in which she stalked a man she barely knew around Venice, taking pictures of him. The man, called Henri B., is only ever shot from afar, with his back turned-a canvas that is, by virtue of being blank, hers to create. Dressed in a blond wig and a detective's trenchcoat, Calle visited landmarks that she hoped he might visit: the Piazza San Marco, an old Jewish cemetery. "I have high expectations of him," she writes.

If projection is a kind of pursuit, Calle has inverted the gendered relationship between risk and fantasy, in which only men can find pleasure in the chase. But the question of what she's actually chasing remains. Henri B. was convinced that it was him, and refused to let Calle include him in the final product; in the end, he is literally absent, replaced by a model. But projection is a hall of mirrors, and, by insisting that Calle had "stolen" their images, the outraged subjects of her earliest works failed to see that they were purely incidental. For Calle, desire-in the Freudian sense of longing for what is not there-was a generative formal constraint. What is revealed in the act of filling such a space is not the person being pursued but the person doing the pursuing.

The closer Calle came to capturing Henri B., the more anguished she felt that he wouldn't match up to the chimera she had conjured of him. "I'm afraid that the encounter might be commonplace. I don't want to be disappointed," she writes. In "The Hotel," traces of Calle show up in little asides that trouble the project's patina of neutrality; of a pair of pants drying in the shower, she writes, "Symbolic, they reflect the tedium that prevails in this room. Unless it's just my own weariness." Throughout, she takes care to show us that she is closer to the center of this story than she may seem. A chance encounter with a handsome guest in the hallway inspires a new plotline in which she is no longer the invisible maid but the protagonist: "For the first time, I imagine for a few seconds a patron taking an interest in my plight."

In the late eighties, Calle's own "plight" became more explicitly her focus. She said that turning the camera on herself was a way of "taking a rest" from the criticism that found her style too prying. But, in two ongoing projects about her "real" life-"Autobiographies," a series of installations, and "True Stories," a series of books-she is at once more candid and more coy. Although the stories she tells are ostensibly confessional, they are also playfully overdetermined and psychoanalytically obvious. Calle recalls ordering a dessert called "Young Girl's Dream" as a teen-ager, and being brought a peeled banana flanked by two scoops of ice cream. "I closed my eyes the same way I closed them years later when I saw my first naked man," she writes. In another vignette, she describes being encouraged, at fourteen, to get a nose job-an anecdote accompanied by a closeup photograph of her nose in profile, which remains perfectly aquiline because her surgeon committed suicide two days before the procedure was scheduled to take place. If at last we get a picture of her-in this case, a literal one-it takes the form of caricature, a playful concession to her critics' demands for a properly first-person Calle.

Other works, such as the exhibition and book " Exquisite Pain " and the film "No Sex Last Night," are studded with tantalizing details about breakups and her failed marriage, from which Calle emerges as the archetype of a French woman artist-a capricious, mordant coquette, who hides behind her dark fringe and sunglasses like a character in a New Wave film. It's an overwritten persona, which may be her intention. By inviting her spectators to construct a campy portrait from the autobiographical traces that she leaves behind, she conscripts them into the same game of fantastical misreading that she plays with her own subjects.

But if Calle wants her viewers to be seduced by her self-mythologizing, she seems also to want them to see that they are being seduced-to dramatize the instability of the self. She has suggested that there is no truth-value to her work, but she also says that she is "incapable of inventing." Her projects center on confession and exposure, and yet, she claims, "I never feel I am revealing anything."

The essential unknowability of other people haunts all of Calle's work, as both the greatest inducement to curiosity and the greatest threat to creativity. In "The Hotel," the details that we think of as the most intimate-stained sheets, used tissues, a bloody sanitary pad on the edge of the sink-turn out to be the least interesting: everyone's dirty towels look the same. Such barriers to real intimacy are most obvious, and most ominous, in Room 45, where a "Do Not Disturb" sign hangs on the doorknob for six consecutive days. "I begin to wonder if anyone is really staying in there," Calle writes.

In 1993, Calle told the art historian Bice Curiger that everything in "The Hotel" was "completely true." That is, except for one room, which she admitted was "completely fake": "I took an empty room and I filled it with what I would have wished to find." The claim casts the entire project in a new light, sending the reader back to the beginning of the book, this time to try to find the fiction. And yet each image may be no more or less true than it was to begin with. What Calle-or any of her viewers-see is always, inevitably shaped by what they "wished to find." Every room, in this sense, is the "empty room," a place in which we make something out of nothing.

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Sophie Calle and the Art of Leaving a Trace

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Lili Owen Rowlands on the French artist Sophie Calle's photography, video, and performance projects that are, at once, intimate and removed, including her book "The Hotel," an English translation of which has been reissued by Siglo.

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A 3D scan is a way of digitally capturing a real-world space or object and turning it into a virtual model.
Using a phone, tablet, or a small scanner, people can walk around a room and record everything — the furniture, the layout, even small details like shoes on the floor or books on a desk.
The final result is a 3D version of the space that you can view from different angles, zoom into, and even "walk through" virtually.

It's like freezing a moment in time, not just with flat pictures, but by creating an entire environment you can revisit later.
In the context of personal spaces, like bedrooms or study rooms, 3D scanning has become a new way for people — especially students — to preserve memories of places that once felt like home

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During my research, I noticed an interesting trend: before leaving the UK, many students are now doing 3D scans of their rooms. They use their phones or portable scanners to capture the entire space, so they can keep a virtual version of the room and revisit it anytime, even through VR.

I find this phenomenon really touching, because it shows that when students leave, it's not just about packing up and moving on — there's a deep desire to hold onto the sense of place, the small scenes of everyday life that carried so much meaning. Every piece of furniture, every little object scattered across the room, becomes part of the memory of their time abroad.

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This trend of doing 3D scans is closely tied to the emotional needs of international students, especially considering the fixed cycle of studying abroad.
Most international students know from the very beginning that their time overseas has a clear start and end — it's temporary by nature.
Because of this, the experience of studying abroad often feels like a very intense, condensed chapter of life.

When the end of the cycle approaches — graduation, moving out, going home — students naturally look for ways to hold onto what they built during that time: not just friendships or achievements, but the everyday environments that made them feel at home.
3D scanning becomes a way to preserve these spaces fully and vividly, almost like creating a time capsule of their daily life.

It shows that international students aren't just trying to keep a few souvenirs; they're trying to keep the feeling of belonging, of routine, of identity that they formed while abroad.
In a way, the 3D scan helps to soften the emotional gap between the intense experience of studying abroad and the inevitable return home.
It offers a way to revisit that chapter later — not just through memories, but through a real, navigable space that reminds them how it once felt to live there.

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The growing trend of international students creating 3D scans of their living spaces clearly shows that there’s a strong emotional need to preserve memories tied to everyday life abroad.
It proves that for many students, the physical environment — the rooms they lived in, the objects they used daily — carries deep personal meaning.
They aren't just remembering the big milestones like graduation; they’re trying to capture the small, familiar spaces that made up their day-to-day experience.

This directly supports the necessity of my project.
If students are willing to go to the effort of scanning entire rooms to preserve memories, it shows that the objects within those spaces — the furniture, the lamps, the kitchen tools, even the decorations — also hold emotional value.
These aren’t just second-hand goods; they are personal artifacts from a meaningful chapter of life.

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My project can support this emotional need by creating a platform where second-hand goods are not treated as disposable, but as carriers of memory.
Instead of purely transactional exchanges, the platform can encourage users to share short stories or personal notes about the items they are passing on — making the process of selling and buying feel more like a continuation of the object's journey, rather than just a financial transaction.

In this way, my project doesn’t just help students deal with the practical need to sell or donate their belongings before leaving.
It also offers them a way to honor their memories and give a new life to the objects that were part of their experience — supporting both emotional closure and practical circulation in a natural, human-centered way.

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Justine Soulié – Illustrator & Motion Designer

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Justine Soulié – Illustrator & Motion Designer

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Paris-based Justine Soulié’s personal site exemplifies a modern hand-drawn aesthetic with a strong design touch​. Her homepage features a pastel color scheme and playful, drawn elements in the typography and icons, immediately conveying her illustrative style​. The layout is clean and simple, letting her whimsical illustrations stand out. Interactive details (like subtle icon animations) add personality without overwhelming the work. Overall, Justine’s website strikes a great balance – it showcases her illustration portfolio front and center while reflecting her creative personality through design.

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Justine Soulié - Motion Designer & Illustrator

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Hi, I am Justine Soulié, a french freelance art director based in Paris with a keen interest in motion and illustration

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key words:interacting,colormatching,landscape sliding

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Marion Deuchars – Hand-Lettering Illustrator

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Marion Deuchars – Hand-Lettering Illustrator

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Marion Deuchars is an award-winning British illustrator celebrated for her instantly recognizable hand-lettered style​itsnicethat.com. Her personal website reflects that playful, hand-drawn spirit in its design. It showcases a range of Marion’s projects – from children’s books to gallery work – with her signature lettering and illustrations setting the tone. Navigation is kept straightforward, allowing visitors to easily browse artwork collections and read about her projects. The site also includes an “About” section detailing Marion’s background and influences, which helps contextualize her work. By integrating her distinctive artistic style into the site’s visuals, Marion’s website not only displays her artwork but also conveys the creative personality behind it, achieving a strong blend of portfolio, biography, and design.

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About MarionBritish illustrator and author Marion Deuchars publishes beautifully illustrated children’s books and has created her own globally recognised style of hand lettering. Graduating with a distinction from the Royal College of Art in 1981, Marion went on to co-form an art and design studio. Her output has seen projects that span across corporate literature, publishing, editorial, packaging, advertising, web, brand development, craft and interior design. Marion’s work with major design and advertising agencies include commercial clients Royal Mail Stamps, Carluccio’s and the Imperial War Museum, resulting in gold and silver awards at the Art Director’s Club New York and four D&AD pencils.Her ‘Let’s Make Some Great Art’ series of art activity books for Laurence King Publishing have won numerous awards and translated into 22 languages. She has also written and illustrated many picture books, including; Bob the Artist about a Blackbird who finds his true self through the power of art.Born in Scotland, Marion now lives and works in North London. She is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a Royal Designer for Industry.

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How it can support me -clear and professional artist intro

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How it can support me -clear and professional artist intro

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Ego Rodriguez – Illustrator & Visual Artist

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Ego Rodriguez – Illustrator & Visual Artist

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His illustrations – inspired by pop culture, retro posters, and queer culture – burst with bright colors and raw, hand-drawn strokes​, and the website’s design wisely lets these speak for themselves. The homepage is often filled with a striking gallery of artwork, immediately showcasing Ego’s edgy and intimate style​. Navigation is minimal, focusing on visual browsing, but you can typically find info about Ego and his projects via an about page or footer. The visual impact of the site is memorable: it reflects Ego’s unique blend of influences (mythology, vintage ads, comic art) and provides an engaging way to explore his portfolio​. It’s a strong example of a personal site that balances artwork and personality, using design to reinforce the artist’s voice.

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Sirma Karaguiozova – Illustrator & Graphic Designer

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Sirma Karaguiozova – Illustrator & Graphic Designer

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Sirma Karaguiozova’s portfolio (she’s based in Belgium) demonstrates a minimalist, user-friendly design that highlights her illustrations​. The site opens directly into a neatly arranged gallery of artwork – a grid of colorful illustrations that immediately draw the eye​. On hover, each image shows a gentle color change, inviting interaction, and clicking pops up a lightbox slideshow for a closer look​. Importantly, Sirma includes a personable bio section: her “About Me” page (titled just “Me”) adds a personal touch, offering a short biography, an embedded Instagram feed of recent sketches, and a contact form​. This gives visitors context about her background and an easy way to reach out. By keeping the menu options minimal and content focused, Sirma’s site achieves a smooth balance between showcasing art and providing personal info – it’s straightforward yet still feels warm and creative.

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Gosia Mosz (Mayo Nmg) – Children’s Illustrator

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Gosia Mosz (Mayo Nmg) – Children’s Illustrator

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Gosia Mosz is a UK-based children’s book illustrator, and her portfolio site reflects the whimsical, kid-friendly charm of her work. The galleries are filled with unique, colorful characters and imaginative scenes from her books and art series​. Notably, her site features specific projects – for example, a series titled “Stranger in my Home” created as art for children’s rooms​. By highlighting such series, the site provides context and narrative to her illustrations, effectively serving as project descriptions for each body of work. The overall design is playful but organized: viewers can easily browse through thumbnails of her illustrations and click to see larger images or details. You’ll also find an about page detailing Gosia’s background and clients (she’s a well-known illustrator in this space), which adds credibility and personal context. This combination of a vibrant art showcase with a bit of story behind the work makes Gosia’s site a strong reference.

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Maria Källström’s online portfolio (she hails from Stockholm, Sweden) offers a bright and inviting display of her illustration work. At a glance, the homepage grid gives a quick overview of her style – vividly colorful and modern illustrations, many featuring the playful characters she’s created for children’s books​format.com. This grid layout makes it easy to scan through different projects and get a feel for her range, from editorial pieces to pattern designs. Once viewers click on an image, viewers can typically see more details or additional images from that project, along with captions or descriptions, which is great for understanding the context behind her art. Maria’s site design is straightforward and cheerful, using white space and simple navigation so that her artwork really pops. It’s a great example of a portfolio that quickly communicates an artist’s style (especially useful for busy viewers or potential clients) while still allowing deeper exploration of each project. Her biography and contact info are available as well, but kept separate from the gallery – ensuring the artwork remains center stage until the viewer wants to know more.

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Paul Pateman (Pâté) – Graphic Illustrator

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Paul Pateman (Pâté) – Graphic Illustrator

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Paul Pateman – known by the moniker “Pâté” – is a London-based illustrator whose site demonstrates the power of bold simplicity. His portfolio uses a unique scrolling gallery where you view one piece at a time, almost like flipping through full-page spreads​. This format lets each illustration make a full impact; in fact, the vibrant colors and clever text elements in his work come across like posters on a wall​. As you scroll, it creates the illusion of moving through an exhibit of Paul’s work, an effect that nods to his background in advertising design​. There’s minimal distraction – a simple menu allows access to different sections (such as an info/about page and perhaps a projects archive), but the focus remains on those big, bold images. By using this design, Paul’s site gives viewers a memorable immersive art experience and underlines the strong graphic nature of his illustrations. It’s a useful reference for how a portfolio can be both art-driven and thoughtfully designed to reflect the artist’s style.

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Considering that in my project, the publication serves as a supporting element for promoting my website, I focused on folded page binding methods when choosing the format. This is because folded pages are one of the most commonly used structures in promotional materials.

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Final Group Tutorial Summary & Reflection

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Final Group Tutorial Summary & Reflection

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In the final group tutorial, Becky provided constructive and highly specific feedback regarding the graphic design and layout quality of my advertising booklet. Her critique focused on fundamental aspects of visual communication that I had significantly overlooked—such as typographic consistency, bleed line awareness, and the positioning of text blocks.

More specifically, she pointed out that:

Text sizes across pages should be consistent to maintain visual rhythm.

Critical content should avoid being centered too closely to the booklet fold, as this risks content being misaligned or unreadable due to the binding structure.

The typeface selection must harmonies with the overall aesthetic tone of the design.

Bleed settings should be embedded into the layout early on to avoid last-minute production misalignments.

This feedback revealed a major blind spot in my process: I had spent extensive time refining illustration style, colour palettes, and applying consumer psychology strategies—believing that conceptual strength and inter-disciplinary thinking were the most essential components of impactful advertising. Yet ironically, I only spent 20 minutes arranging the type and layout—a last-minute step that ultimately became the most visibly flawed and structurally vulnerable part of my work.

Becky’s advice prompted a sharp reflection on my time allocation and design priorities throughout this project. I had devoted 50% of my effort to high-level conceptual development, 40% to visual/illustrative polish, and almost none to the core communicative structure—how information is actually delivered to the viewer

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In response to this realisation, I immediately revised my layout:

I re-imported the file into InDesign

Redesigned the page sequence as a saddle-stitched (booklet) print

Re-calculated the bleed and margin structure

Reformatted all typography with size unification and repositioned all central text

However, due to time constraints, I was unable to submit the optimised version to the printing house in time for the final presentation. Despite this, I proceeded to create a high-quality physical mockup, refining it through multiple iterations until I achieved the visual result I had originally envisioned.

Although I regret that these changes did not make it into the first print run, I now have a clear plan to update my printed materials before the final degree show. I intend to print 50 updated booklets to be distributed and sold alongside my platform-related merchandise, using the improved version as both a marketing object and tactile storytelling device.

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This experience has taught me that conceptual rigour and interdisciplinary thinking must be matched by technical precision and production foresight. Visual communication is not merely about what I want to express, but how effectively that expression is received by an audience. This means typography, spacing, and layout logic are not cosmetic—they are central to trust, legibility, and design credibility.

Moving forward, I will embed these lessons into my future workflows by:

Integrating print production planning earlier in the design phase

Allocating structured time for *visual testing and audience readability

Valuing communication clarity as much as narrative depth

What I initially experienced as a shortfall has become a valuable pivot point in my design literacy and decision-making. And more importantly, it realigned me with one of the most essential goals of this project: to make emotional meaning visible, readable, and shareable—not just ideologically rich, but also physically coherent.