Life Scapes magazine

How do people express themselves online and offline and is there a connection between the two? The Life Scapes magazine explores these questions in a visual and inspiring way. The magazine is one of the latest installments in the Belonging and Belongings project, resulting from a collaboration with the Chelsea College of Art & Design. Over the course of a semester we ran a competition for students, asking them to produce a magazine based on their explorations on how people create identities for themselves in both online and offline worlds.

Fifty students worked in small groups in order to produce a mock-up for a magazine detailing people’s navigation of identity in real and virtual spaces. After reviewing a wide range of submissions, we chose a winner, and funded the production of 250 copies of the magazine Life Scapes. The magazine features a full overview of the winning study, and also includes a summary of the work by the other student groups. Life Scapes proposes a compelling notion of how people edit their individual styles through fashion, communication technology and other personal belongings. The result of this study matches nicely with the proceedings of our own ongoing research into how technology continues to impact upon notions of identity.

Belonging and Belongings is a long-term collaboration with the Critical Design Lab at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. The recent project with the students from Chelsea College was an excellent opportunity for us to explore new ways to communicate qualitative research results in a magazine format. In this way the regular studies withing the Belonging & Belongings programme enable us to do R&D experiment with different formats and inspire our work for clients.

Life Scape is published in a limited run of 250 copies. If you are interested in this magazine, send us an email.