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Printing Mountains

Juliana Monsalve Carrillo

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Hola :))) I am a London-based communication designer from Colombia. With experience in editorial design, I enjoy exploring typography, collage, and textiles as mediums for image making and tools for design research. My approach has been interdisciplinary, with interests in printing, editorial practices, and publications.

Hola :))) I am a London-based communication designer from Colombia. With experience in editorial ...

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This collection of artefacts explores relationships between movement and publishing. It is a response to types of publishing and writings reflective of my Colombian background. The project engages the body in the reading experience to question: how can publishing mechanisms be used to choreograph gestures that convey experiences of navigating landscapes? 

Cordillera: an Ode to the Mountains, challenges traditional reading formats. The first three artefacts use playful and extensive shapes to force bodily involvement. These are used to translate how mountain landscapes have an impact on memory, spatial orientation and language.

Thinking about more portable, reproducible, and circulable formats, Without Mountainsuses layout, binding, and printing techniques to evoke the experience of moving to a new place (London). By prompting slight hand and head gestures, the last three artefacts explore how I have been building new spatial relations in response to the absence of a mountainous landscape.

{double click on each image to experience the movement}

Final work

  • Long strip of paper in the shape of a circle. There is text along the piece narrating the presence of the mountains growing up.
  • Concertina publication that displays different words used to describe different rain. Heavier rain leads to more folds unfolding in the publication.
  • Fan style publication that creates a circle. It narrates about moving around body axis and looking for the mountains when lost.

Cordillera: An ode to the Mountain

These artefacts explore the effects of growing in a mountainous landscape.

1’ Memory. Being surrounded by mountains influences how we remember and build experiences. Choreography: circular motions around body to evoke mountain embrace.

2’ Immensity. Mountains impact how we perceive universal phenomena like rain, and as a result, this has an effect on the language surrounding this event. Choreography: arms expanding in multiple direction to evoke vastness and trickled down rain.

3’ Direction. The mountains as a reference point affect how we move in space. The cordillera, just like a book, prompts the body to position itself in a certain direction. Choreography: rotating on body axis to evoke searching for spatial direction.

  • Map with multiple folds that allows various combinations. The map displays a circular figure to evoke how London follows a river logic.
  • Concertina screen print publication. Some text is printed with white ink on white paper that can only be read when lifted towards the sky.
  • French fold publication that displays train lines and train times on the outside. On the inside it has a text about the experience of traveling under.

Without mountains: building spatial relationships

1’ Walking in Circles: non-linear thought streams. About the ground floor: moving to a place without mountains and getting lost. Choreography: hands opening map in multiple directions to evoke feeling of being lost and not sure where to start.

2’ Sky Reading: notes on replacing mountains with buildings. About the upper level: filling the absence of mountains by looking for buildings and giving meanings to them. Choreography: white ink on white paper forces to hold publication upwards and look towards the sky to read the content. 

3’ Under Surface: skew travelling. About underground level: traveling by tube is an experience of navigating the city without seeing it. Choreography: peeking inside and ripping to evoke a hidden/detached travelling encounter.

Research and process

Images of paper interactions, sketches, design and french folding iterations.

Paper prototyping

Prototyping with paper became a key part of my process. It allowed me to test scale, body interactions, look at movements, sketch, and fold. All of these iterations allowed me to identify a choreographic element when thinking about ways of publishing. It also led me to questions such as: how does the body read through shape, materials, and forms? and to think about how traditional publishing artefacts standardise reading positions, body patterns, and ways of approaching content. 

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Printing Mountains

This collection of artefacts explores relationships between movement and publishing. It is a response to types of publishing and writings reflective of my Colombian background. The project engages the body in the reading experience to question: how can publishin...

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