Rayonero 21
21
From research to impact: a design project with social impact towards tattoo culture in Mexico.
For my bachelor’s thesis, along with my team we were able to coordinate and host an exhibition that revolved around the tattoo culture in my city Monterrey, Mx. The objective was to tackle the existing social problematic around prejudices of people with tattoos.
1. Research Methodology
Our process started from literature research to understand the history and cultural aspects of the tattoo practices. We then moved further on with surveys and interviews to tattoo artists (8 different artists from 5 different local studios) and people with tattoos to understand better the perception of the tattoo in the local society of Monterrey, Mx and see how we could create a change in its perception in the positive aspect.2. The exhibition
Our idea to create an exhibition to tell the story of the tattoo came with the intention to give people a closer experience to the practice and generate a different idea around it. Our audience were locals living in the city of Monterrey. In the exhibition we included interactive, informational, and live experiences.For the informational part we had visual data graphics that represented a timeline of tattoo’s style creation, we then included different polaroids of people’s tattoos (previously asked) and the meaning behind them and invited assistants to share the tattoos they had and what it meant to them. At last, we had a live tattoing experience in which a tattoo artist kindly volunteered to create a 3 hour tattoo for a follower that had won a contest.
The insights we got from our 100+ attendees were very positive, ranging from:
- Comments on how assistants now understood what a tattoo can mean to people, turning into a positive point of view.
- Others commented that it was their first time actually seeing someone getting tattoed.
- Others felt sentimental towards the stories that had been previously shared by our volunteers, accomplishing the objective of empathizing with others and their intentions with their tattoos.
The final result can be seen in this video. (in Spanish)
a. Landing page design for event
A specific asset that I worked on and were my first approaches in UX/UI design was a landing page meant to create an interaction with external people. We aimed to create a digital gallery in which you could submit your own tattoo + story if you wished to share it, as well as knowing more about the tattoo artist community in Mexico and buying merch.Role: Designer
Tools:
Adobe Suite - for design assets
Illustrator
Photoshop
Adobe XD
Indesign
Responsibilities:
Conceptualization
User Research
User experience flow
Graphic Assets
Coordination of events