Róisín
McElhatton
Born in Edmonton, Alberta, raised by a strong-willed Irish mother, sometimes you'll catch me with a wee accent. 🍀
I'm inspired by nourishing conversations and nonsense. My career goals are to pursue design through effective systems thinking; what wicked problems can I challenge? I've returned to MacEwan to complete my bachelor's degree after graduating with my diploma because design is seductive and intrinsically connected to human development. I want to be at the center of innovating a world with interconnected design.
I'm inspired by nourishing conversations and nonsense. My career goals are to pursue design through effective systems thinking; what wicked problems can I challenge? I've returned to MacEwan to complete my bachelor's degree after graduating with my diploma because design is seductive and intrinsically connected to human development. I want to be at the center of innovating a world with interconnected design.
Be
I write poetry in my spare time. This poem is one that I’ve carried with me through the last year of my Bachelor’s Degree; I find that it reminds me to be true to myself, above all, through every stage of existence.
Close up.
Full Circle – The Website
This interactive website showcases the creation of ‘hybrid piezo tribal electric flags’ through the lens of biomimicry. This design informs on the biomimicry design process. It provides examples of its usage and showcases informative aspects of biomimicry through time. The illustrations symbolize the elements of nature that are ‘mimicked’ in complete circle design. The diver represents the storyline of taking the user on a deep dive into the nature of biomimicry.
Opening page, featuring illustration and a quote to dive into the website.
Process.
A closer look at the pages.
A closer look at other pages and illustrations.
From Russia with Love – An Exhibit on Soviet Poster Art (and it’s modern applications)
This project challenged my team to create an exhibit from the ground up, which consisted of designing; visual identity, colors, typography, scale, floor plans… the list goes on. For my portion of this assignment, I focused on the scale of posters, art tags, digital access (QR codes), and merchandise.
Scale of Posters and Tags.
Front Page, QR Code and Merchandise.
Examples of the Exhibit.
Wayfinding (Poster Placements) and Exterior Wayfinding.
We Didn’t Listen
This piece designs a plausible future world. It is a work of fiction. It is inspired by the growing rate of technological advancement and questions if there is a negative impact on our airways/frequencies' future with more technology.
Behind Your Face: An Interactive Children’s Book on Mental Health
My capstone project centers on the increasing demands of children’s mental health space. The growing need for societal congruence can be detrimental to the developing minds of children. The consequences for children not having a proper mental health space are devastating to families, society, and the world. Through my capstone project I ask; how might design research better facilitate a connection between children’s wellbeing and storytelling?
In the Fall 2021 semester,I researched children’s storytelling; did you know that our ideals of children today stem from the romantic era? Or that fairytales weren’t originally written for children? Or that the industrial revolution was built with tiny hands? One thing came up over and over again in my various forms of research, surveys and interviews: Resilience. How then could I transfer my research of resilience into my storytelling about mental health?
Here’s some initial storylines and sketches of one of the main characters. I designed this fella to be extremely expressive to show that emotions, regardless of what they are, are safe and welcome. The story itself has changed multiple times as I integrated more and less to portray the direction of a safe space that I wanted to emulate with charming characters and lyrical storytelling.
In this slide, the reader is asked to imagine our main character from the deep dark ocean blue…
This spread is near the end of the book after the main character has given the reader an opportunity to figure out what nothings and something’s are. This part of the story is bittersweet as the main character is leaving. There’s plenty of texture throughout the story to elicit the imperfect nature of humanness and traditional forms. I believe that there’s magic.
