For the final prompt we were asked to conduct a design inquiry into an area that interested us. I wanted to keep exploring materiality and lead with my strengths in illustration and making. My topics of interest intersected my previous explorations of my South Asian background with new inquiries around my own queerness. My research included auto-ethnographic and archival methods to study this intersection and make a set of wearable pins that expressed it visually. The designs dealt with personal provocations and inside jokes around dating and sexuality, adapted and appropriated visual culture in Toronto’s Church-Wellesley Village, and borrowed vocabulary from memes and internet enclaves.
