2022

Alexandra Virlan

Bună, I’m Alex!

I’m a social designer and a visual communicator who loves getting stuck in with generating ideas and creating visual systems (with a cup of coffee always in reach!).

Working with a school during my industry year out really focused the direction of the work I now create. My work takes a human-centred approach, focussing on the interaction between format and audience experience.

The 3 projects I want to celebrate below all take the lead as examples of interactive learning.

Co-Play

Due to the pandemic, the gap between disadvantaged and better off pupils has widened by 46% in a year, during the national lockdown (NFER 2020).

Aiming to achieve their ambition of bringing Learning-Through-Play to children everywhere; the Lego Group partnered with RSA to challenge students with this question:

How might we support all families, carers and communities to play & learn more creatively at home?

Embarking on this challenge, my aim was to explore ways in which parents feel more connected to play as a learning experience, not in isolation, but as a mutual exchange with their children.

Fortune tellers (also known as chatterboxes) are a form of origami used in children’s games and the format my solution took shape in.

Co-Play is a fun yet informative device aimed to reach parents at home, from schools.

It aims to create a conversation between parent and child. A mutual exchange of knowledge on the meaning of play for both parties.

It’s the starting brand identity for a series of co-creation workshops which allow parents to explore an in-depth conversation into the world of play.

Atypical

Atypical is a self directed collaborative project with Shazia Ismael. It was initiated by the lack of knowledge around the art and design industries, specifically aimed at young adults (16-18).

Currently, there is a lack of respect for the creative industries compared to traditional career paths, which means that when a student does express interest there is a lack of guidance in schools. The possibilities of the creative job market needs to reach a wider audience, primarily the future of the industry.

Our project offers a form of service design that is a two step experience, made available at college fairs, that offers students the tools needed to start visualising creative post 18-pathways. The experience allows students to visualise unimagined pathways in the art and design sector highlighting atypical options.

My role in this project was to design step two of the student experience. Aimed as a reflective activity, step two introduces a tangible element empowering students to take the lead in visualising atypical career options that they would otherwise not have thought of.

Students are asked by career booth representative: ‘What typical careers do you think are available to you post this degree?’

Students will need to solve the 'Who Am I?' riddles on the back of the puzzle pieces before the atypical career options are revealed.

Aka

As a Romanian and English speaker, I’ve experienced the silent etiquette of moulding to your environment's language.

As a dual national, you want to feel like you belong in that environment. Yet you wish to retain as much of your culture as possible.

Maintaining your culture while fitting into a new environment should simply co-exist.

Aka (Also Known As) is a language game card aimed to highlight the importance of being bilingual and embracing ones dual nationality by sharing this with others.

Aka’s identity is a fusion of my mother tongue, Cyrillic Romanian, with nuances of Latin from the Greek alphabet, proving that diversity is formed by our differences.

Alexandra Virlan

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