While most of us may have picked up a ‘101 things to (fill in the blank) before you die’ book at some point or another, none of those books have had the charismatic charm of an ‘Experience Passport’. Designed by Communication Designer Alex Egner, the Passport offers the design undergrad students at the University of North Texas a way to step away from iPhones, Facebook, and Twitter, and experience the preexisting analog world around them.
The Experience Passport
Designer Alex Egner and his colleagues saw a large divide between their undergrads and ‘experiences in the analog world’, prompting them to develop a solution that encourages not only a way for these young designers to unplug but also how to help them think like a designer:
“My colleagues and I in the University of North Texas communication design program generated a list of life experiences that we feel design students should have in addition to their in-class studies. We want to regularly push students away from their computer screens and out into the world. This list of experiences was then formatted into a series of four passport books, one for each year of our degree program. Students can work through the list—visiting museums, viewing films, listening to the news, etc.—and collect passport stamps along the way.”
-Designer Alex Egner
The laser-printed workbook encourages design-oriented thinking not only throughout their undergrad career but also their lifetime as a designer…through making more articulate observations of the world around them.
Experiences ranging from reading a Pulitzer Prize-Winning work of fiction to watching three Academy Award-Winning movies made before 1945 are among the many ‘analog’ experiences students earn stamps for.
Additionally, the students are encouraged to make their Experience Passport even more personal by being a part of the production process itself:
“By combining black and white laser printing with a mix of paper stocks, we were able to save on costs and still create a compelling artifact. Students were able to customize their passports by selecting their own paper stocks and binding methods.”
-Designer Alex Egner
Perhaps their next ‘experience’ could be to put together a sales campaign so the rest of us can enjoy the Experience Passport?
