India Wilson

Blind Box is a three-day festival in London, celebrating designer toys as a medium for contemporary art and design. Jam-packed with exhibitions, installations, workshops, talks and fair, toy designers across the world are brought together with anyone who shares a love for craft, creativity and design.

The identity’s illustrations take inspiration from the silhouettes found on the back of blind box packaging, often used to represent mysterious finds in a series. Referencing actual designer toys, the graphics celebrate these toys as rare pieces of art and nods to their sculptural diversity that underpins their brilliance. Meanwhile, the wordmark consists of a circle and cross, denoting a pair of eyes which champion the toys’ tendency to straddle both cute and dark elements.

“I’m not a robot” is a phrase many of us see everyday, yet tend to not think about. But with each Google CAPTCHA we complete to prove we’re human, we also help train machines by feeding them with data.

This project explores how materials and typography can be used to enhance the meaning of a piece of text. The giant sliding puzzle is a playful analogue mechanism that reveals this invisible training process. It invites participants to see the significant part their individual contributions play in technological advancements, as “I’m not a robot” is collectively decoded. The COVID-19 pandemic began halfway through this project, therefore an animation was made to function as the digital prototype for the physical typographic piece.

Music: A Magical Journey Through Space by Leonell Cassio from ZapSplat.com

'Dying to be Spoken' focuses on lost words in the English language that have fallen out of everyday use and encourages us to rediscover their fun. The little animation and screen printed poster celebrate the silliness of the words’ funny sounds and odd pronunciation through typography. By simply saying these words, we give them a new lease of life, as they tickle our tongues and bring colour into our everyday.