Digital Panopticon
2016 Adobe Design Achievement Award, Typography, Semi Finalist
Material: NT File (polyethylene based transparent film paper)
Printing: Laser Print, Silk Screen
Digital Panopticon was inspired by the documentary Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013) by Cullen Hoback. His team investigates how blindly accepting the Terms and Conditions puts us in situations where we are vulnerable to data leaks. They also pointed out that our data on the internet cannot be erased even if we deleted our account. Fascinated by this idea, I came up with the idea of making a ‘Terms and Condition (book)’ that will last forever.
So I used PE (plastic) paper and silk screen printing. For the text, I opted for ten of the most traffic-heavy sites on the web, such as Google and Facebook, to study their Terms and Conditions. I carefully read each page and highlighted any lines that had ambiguous or controversial content. I decided to give this content the attention it deserves by doing typography experiments.
So I used PE (plastic) paper and silk screen printing. For the text, I opted for ten of the most traffic-heavy sites on the web, such as Google and Facebook, to study their Terms and Conditions. I carefully read each page and highlighted any lines that had ambiguous or controversial content. I decided to give this content the attention it deserves by doing typography experiments.
First Attempt
I created a series by making four different versions of the book for this project. For the first attempt, I created a book using Google’s Terms and Conditions for the texts and struck a line where there vague wording in it. The plastic material could melt in an offset printer so I used a small laser printer that I owned which was the book size. I used string made of plastic material for binding to the concept.
Second Attempt
For the second attempt, I used the same text as the first book(Google’s Terms and Conditions), but here I varied the color, size, binding, and images because I wanted the book to be more dynamic. I thought having more diverse elements in the book could be a better way of conveying the concept since the intention was letting people know the Terms and Conditions in a new way.
Third Attempt
The purpose of this book was to have an additional reference for my project so that readers can have a better understanding of what motivated my project in the first place. I applied the documentary’s, ‘Terms and Conditions May Apply’, story for the contents and used vinyl textbook covers for the book finishin so as to keep the ‘digital eternity’ concept. For the paper, I used tracing paper and put it in a vinyl cover.
Final version
For the final version, I opted for ten of the most traffic-heav sites on the web, such as Google and Facebook, to study their Terms and Conditions. I carefully read each page and highlighted any specific line that had ambiguous or controversial content. I decided to give this content the attention it deserved by displaying it in an expressive way via a bright, visual medium, as opposed to a small black-and-white print. Since the paper size was too big for a laser printer, I used silkscreen, which gave more interesting results in terms of texture and color.
Silk Screen Process
Exhibition
The series of work was selected for Hongik University's 70th Anniversary International Exchange Exhibition (link) on behalf of the Graduate School of Graphic Design.
