100 Days of Better Conversations

Medium: Acrylic Marker
Recognition: Honorable Mention from the Guy Palazzola Memorial Award

In 4 months, I had 100 conversations, 50 with strangers and 50 with people I know (friends, family, and coworkers). I combined my obsession with design and conversations into a social and visual experiment.

The moment leading up to the initial contact with a complete stranger makes me want to throw up so I decided to challenge myself to do it 50 times. I believe that every authentic conversation you have with a stranger can impact your life. But conversations are not just about random interactions. I wanted to explore every aspect about conversations. What happens when you talk to an old friend you haven’t seen in 5 years or your dad who is extremely reserved?

It was important that this personal project stayed an experiment. Every visual piece was created during one sitting. These 7 months were part of my field research for my thesis. I cannot design something for better conversations without actually having them myself. This project was part of a bigger community through The Great Discontent called The 100 Day Project (originally created by Michael Bierut) hosted by Elle Luna.

Initially, I posted everything on my Instagram daily with a short reflection, but afterward, I created a website with more unedited, detailed reflections.

Link to the official 100DOBC website.

new york graphic design illustration lettering artist

Public Interactions

These were some of the comments, conversations and interactions with strangers and friends relating to the project. These messages came from texts, Facebook, Tinder, and Instagram. Some were encouraging and completely unexpected while others were just plain creepy.

Process

For each conversation, I listened to the recording, transcribed it, and picked a quote. I explored as many different visual styles as possible. The illustrations were produced in one sitting, but if I didn't like the outcome, I repeated the process over again. The purpose of creating the project in a sketchbook was to prevent me from getting too wrapped up in the final product. Experimentation was the goal of my project.

Link to my process and reflection.