Who:

Students from RISD and The New School collaborated on a semester-long project titled 'The Pen-Pal Project'. The assignment consisted of creating a fictional, but feasible, news story that could occur within the next 10 years. The story was presented on a poster, and packaged in a laser cut box. Luca (The New School) focused on creating the story content, and Kirthank (RISD) designed the poster, packaging, and process website.

For:

The poster is aimed towards people within the science community, but is not limited to them. Anyone interested in collecting scientific paraphernalia.

Intention:

The poster is intended to be used as an informative newsletter, which will be part of a series that enables recipients to collect graphics that relate to outer space, as well as the discovery of new planets and intelligent life. The posters are associated with when new planetary discoveries are announced, and will be distributed when such events occur.

Why:

Typically in today’s era, everything is digital, so it would be nostalgic for the recipient to receive a hard-copy poster. The fictional world these students created reflects the space-race of the 1960s, and the involvement the community had in relating day-to-day occurrences. Within the news world, we resort to screens, and this information disappears while being stored in our memory. With this graphic newsletter, the information will be permanent and will remind us of the progress that society is making in the frontier of space exploration.