Alain Findeli is an important design theorists and a proponent of Social Design. His writings have been published in numerous books and journals, many of them difficult to obtain. The website The complete works of Alain Findeli aims to make all his writings available to the public.
The project was conducted as a part of a team of researchers of the Institute of Design Research IDR of the University of the Arts Bern. It originated after a lecture and a subsequent workshop with students given by Findeli at the Institute of Design Research in Bern in 2018. On this occasion Findeli brought his entire collection of publications with him. He ordered his publications chronologically as well as according to seven subject areas.
These subject areas and the chronological order of content served as a starting point. The main interface to access the single publications consists of a timeline. The publications are presented in chronological order and the different subject areas are indicated by colour-coding. Each subject area is further given a specific position in the horizontal grid of the interface. Optionally all content can be filtered by different criteria.
Every publication has a unique page assigned with relevant metadata. Inserts are interwoven into the timeline. They highlight core ideas and, by pointing to the related texts, act as potential points of access for a user into Findeli’s writings.
Data scores
The concept of the interface of is different types of data interwoven into a multi layered mapping. This concept was further extended into a series of posters and additionally the underlying data was abstracted into a series of data generated animations. Both were (partly) designed in the coding environment of Processing.
The posters and the animations are presented in a gallery, together with the option to download the data of all publications. This with the aim to encourage students and practitioners of data visualisation to contribute and thereby to engage with the archive and Findeli’s writings and ideas.
Interface design prototype mapping the length of the publications
Data generated animations
Social media
Extending upon the generative data animations a series of short animations was created to be used as openings for the announcement of the launch of the website in the social media channels of the University of the Arts Bern.
Presentation board of sketches for different intro screens for social media
Process
A first step of the project consisted in collecting (meta) data of all publications. In a second step the information architecture and interaction design was developed. From the very beginning of the project code and design where developed alongside each other.
Extract from collected data
Client
Institute of Design Research IDR of the University of the Arts Bern
Scope of workContent research and writing
Interface- and interaction design
Animations
Interface- and interaction design
Animations
Project partner
In collaboration with researchers of the Institute of Design Research IDR of the University of the Arts Bern: Marie-Eve von Allmen, Marcel Beer, Alain Findeli, Michael Flückiger, Arne Scheuermann
