From Multitudes to Multiples

Convened and collated by graduating students Aaniyah Khan, Charlotte Chan, Han-Jo Tan and Samiya Bashaeb, this conversation brings together two projects concerned with collective representation. Aaniyah, Han-Jo, and Samiya developed a publication for prospective BA Graphic Design students; Charlotte proposed a visual identity for the course’s student-organised graduate show through an open pitch.

Both projects are concerned with how to make a cohort visible without fixing it into a single image. Working with typography, voice, publication, motion, process, and participation, the students considered how individual positions might remain distinct while still contributing to a shared visual language.

Their discussion moves between authorship and collaboration, experimentation and constraint, audience and client, pitch and outcome. It considers the shifting conditions of design practice, from negotiation, editing, compromise, iteration, and when and how to let go.

From multitudes of voices and perspectives emerge multiples—publications, identities, prototypes, versions, and revisions. What results is not a singular portrait of a cohort, but a set of graphic forms through which it might be encountered.

This conversation took place at Murmur, the Graduate Show in London in July 2026. The transcription has been edited for flow and concision.

Where the Projects Began

Han-Jo: With the course publication, our aim was to represent the student voice and show what we were like as a cohort—showing them how things could or would be when they join. It was looking at student input, process, work-in-progress, and the student experience. Our graphic language emerged from that in quite an organic way and was refined along the process. We wanted to produce something that was experimental and informed, reflecting how we see the course.

Aaniyah: The main visual language began with typography. The direction leaned really heavily into bold, distinct typography because we wanted our publication to immediately be seen as a ‘graphic design’ publication. With how each typeface has its own distinct stroke and style, we wanted the identity itself to almost give each student their own voice—typography itself is just the visual manifestation of a voice. Also, because the specific format was dictated by the brief, we could also push this identity even further through the smaller components, such as through interviews and postcards containing people’s experimentation. It was really important to have this identity and visual voice that could spread across the entire format in different ways. We knew that if we were excited about it, other prospective students would be as well. Student to student.

Charlotte: For our cohort’s self-organised degree show, we had an open-pitch system for the identity. It was held up to a democratic vote to see what we would proceed with for the actual show. Similar to Aaniyah, Han-Jo, and Samiya’s project, my pitch brought in the idea of everyone’s voices. I didn’t want to do a very literal representation—you know—with how puns or objects are sometimes used to symbolise the identity of a cohort. I wanted something that came from a more authentic place—literally their voice.

So being a graphic design course, I wanted to explore it in a very graphical way. The concept came about from a place of visualising typography formed by sound waves. The connection just kind of came to me! Typography becomes both a literal visual translation of everyone’s individual voices and a visual shorthand that comes off very graphical. Other than the graphical direction, the pitch also included ideas of including the voice in other ways, other mediums, such as with social media content generated by the cohort as the show gets promoted. It would include a lot of documentation and video content that would display the contributions of every student. I liked how it was multi-dimensional in that way.

Both projects involved designing for a wider group.
What considerations shaped your approach from the outset?

Han-Jo: For us, it was important to try to communicate voices because we were such a large cohort. Our first instinct was to go directly to the students themselves. The concept of our project was to communicate student to student, so it was important that the design had to reflect the students and represent both demographics simultaneously. What we then did was to go into the studio, asking people questions in relation to studio culture, documenting photos of work and how people like to work in the studio itself.

Charlotte: For myself, when I was thinking about pitching for the degree show, I was quite excited to do it just because I’ve gone to a number of degree shows—mainly in my home country of Singapore. In those cases, their identities would be for the whole school of art & design and not just for one course—I acknowledge that the context differs a little. Anyway, a lot of times, the identities have an abstract, multi-object kind of thing where a particular shape represents the graphic design course, or this colour represents architecture. It often felt lacking in any significant meaning and was a direction that I did not want to go in. I initially considered the direction of using a metaphor of a domino to represent our cohort. Dominoes allude to networks and the cascading impact practitioners have on each other in the industry—you can imagine lots of motion graphics and stuff coming out of it. However, it also felt a little flat of a concept. All those thoughts about what it means to enter the position, your practice, and enter the industry crossed off certain design directions and eventually led to this voice identity.

In what ways did other people and collaborative methods inform the project?

Aaniyah: For you, it’s just ‘people’, right? Not really ‘collaboration’ since you worked on the pitch alone.

Charlotte: Kind of. The idea of ‘people’ played a part in the visual identity through the typography itself, rather, the contents of the typography. All the text is made up of people’s names, and I also imagined it going into a space of including people’s quotes and such. In a lot of the past identities I’ve seen, because they are more abstract representations, each identity didn’t necessarily tie into a specific cohort. Whereas because of how the voice identity would have to be generated through content from our specific cohort, I wanted it to really be unique to just us.

As for collaboration, because my identity was a pitch and stopped at the speculative stage, there wasn’t a whole lot of collaboration that went into it. Both Gabby Hodgman and Stanley Plowman pitched individually but as a result of tying for first place worked together to realise the ‘Murmur’ identity. That led to a different, serendipitous development of the identity. Pitches aren’t perfect in the first instance and I think it’s great because they got to bring together their skill sets; Gabby is more print-oriented, whereas Stanley’s more digital and motion-oriented. Out of both their worlds, something new was created. In a parallel universe, I would’ve been quite interested in seeing how my pitch identity could have manifested in a more collaborative sense.

Charlotte: You each came into your project as a group; how did that influence the process?  How did three of you play into that aspect?

Aaniyah: For all three of us, we had distinct ways of approaching design. For me, it was leaning into bold typography, which I worked on heavily for the poster side of the publication. For Han-Jo, that was developing a lot of the typesetting across different components and incorporating it alongside our unique lettering. With Samiya, that was selecting and pushing the layout of different typefaces and lettering themselves. So in itself, we pushed the design in our own distinct ways which also came together to develop the publication as a whole.

Also, it wasn’t just collaboration within our group but also collaborating with the students, lecturers, technicians, and alumni from the course. Interviews with alumni, Quba Brown-Higgins, Jack Niblett, and Daniel Roberts on their experiences within the course was arguably the most important part of the publication. It was important for prospective students to see where students from our course have gone on to do. This approach also led us to contact Jack and Jacob Wise (another alumni) for inclusion of some of their typefaces as well. So collaboration for us just kept developing throughout the project, and was definitely the defining characteristic of our process.

Han-Jo: The outcome couldn’t have been that experimental if it wasn’t an outcome of collaboration. I think that really contributed to how it actually looked and gave it that distinct style because it came from the three of us individually and not just according to a set identity already.

Samiya: There was constant communication between the three of us. We’d always come back together and show each other what we had done, just to make sure there was a common theme throughout all three sections. So, it wasn’t like we were doing it completely on our own; we’d always have meeting points where we’d discuss the changes we had made and talk about what else we could do to progress.

Aaniyah: Yeah, there were continuous discussions and meetings about reprinting our design over and over, even though it felt repetitive at times. And because this was a publication about the course, having our collaboration and meetings with Marcus Leis Allion, our tutor, was another meaningful part of our project. 

Samiya: Marcus gave us a different outlook on our ideas and moments where we couldn’t see what we were creating; he saw things develop that we couldn’t see developing ourselves since we were looking at it so much. It was nice having a fresh pair of eyes.

What were your primary methods of making?
How did they relate to your individual practices?

Charlotte: I only had two to three days to formally work on the pitch, and my natural instinct when it comes to beginning a project is mainly digital. With the voice identity, I really wanted to explore a reactive identity with source-based generative visuals. For example, using TouchDesigner or Cavalry where it allows for you to input some sort of source material. The actual pitch I did was just flat and 2D—no motion—but I imagined it going in a way where you could put in audio, people’s voices, and have that translate visually into the identity. I’ve personally focused a lot on visual identity this year and was interested in, you could say, ‘progressive’ or ‘growing’ visual systems, so this pitch was a fun avenue to ideate through.

Han-Jo: For us, I think we started off working on it digitally, but after that we moved on to paper experiments—so, actually printing out our design elements, different typeface choices we had in mind, and then physically putting them together onto the table and then seeing what worked and what didn’t. That links to my practice because I used paper experimentation in my Strand (Mediatisation) project, and was a defining direction for it.

Aaniyah: I think it was really different for me because my practice revolves more around digital design. So we started off digitally, but we also moved on to more physical experiments, with moving around cut-out design elements on a physical layout because we realised digital wasn’t working as well. It helped us solidify that we wanted our publication to showcase the experimental process that went behind any student project, because to us that process was more important to highlight to prospective students than outcomes. 

Samiya: In my practice, taking things out of the digital and making them physical is always a defining moment, because for me, that’s the best way for learning and development. Making physical mockups helped us a lot on this project. Taking it out of the digital gave us a different outlook on the sizing and things that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise across those multiple stages.

Charlotte: Since this was a live brief, did you see it as a limitation or something that gave structure in terms of how the brief influenced the form of your project as you developed it?

Samiya: I think it was both a limitation and also a positive because at some points we couldn’t go as crazy as we wanted to because the brief was set and there was a goal outcome. You couldn’t just go off on your own to a certain extent.

Aaniyah: I think the brief itself was specific in some areas, but considering the specific format, it was also…

Charlotte: Open-ended.

Aaniyah: Yes, it gave enough room for us to almost explore outside the format but also push against its own restrictions to an extent.

Samiya: The brief’s limitations helped us find other creative solutions to how we wanted to develop it in our initial ideas. Without the limitations, I don’t think we would have been able to create the outcome that we did.

Han-Jo: It was, for me, one of the few projects where the format really influenced the design because we were given quite a specific size or format. It kind of made us think about how we can incorporate our design inside the format itself, whereas usually it was the design influencing the format. So that was a nice way around thinking about things. And that kind of led us to think more about like materials and kind of how that influences the design as well.

How was the project ultimately resolved?

Charlotte: Even though my pitch wasn’t chosen, I still really liked it and wanted to continue developing it. We had another brief called ‘Into the Library’ where you picked a library and rebranded it. I’ve never started a project this way, but I thought this was a good opportunity to reverse-engineer and find a library that spoke to oral traditions or something like that and align with my voice identity. In the end, I found this place called the Human Library based in Copenhagen. It’s really interesting because you borrow ‘Books’, which are people, and have a sit-down with them to hear their stories. The NGO promotes empathy and understanding surrounding stigmatised topics. For example, they have folks who speak on topics of depression, ADHD, being a gay parent, being heavily tattooed, etc. So I thought this was a really fitting place, but it’s also the first project ever where I’ve gone into it already having an identity in mind. It was a bit odd in that way; it was a process of trying to detangle myself from certain biases in design decisions and trying not to impose my pre-existing identity too much—still leave room for exploration. In the end, I contacted the founder of the Human Library, and a lot of what he said resonated with me and resonated with the identity but also built upon it. Instead of the pitch’s original crazy, bright neon colours, the identity is about shades of grey representing that idea of nuance between people rather than just seeing everything in the extremes of black and white. So while it technically still sits in a speculative space, it did get to engage with the real world in the sense of showing it to the founder of the Human Library.

Aaniyah: Because this project is meant to be professionally printed for the public, we recently had budget restrictions and our original format had to be changed—I want to say—drastically. A lot of our design had to be shifted and changed based on the new format given. We’re having a new print run in the future in a smaller batch, with the new changes, and I think it was an overall unavoidable yet necessary change in order to achieve the print we all could collectively agree on. Even our medium changed because of these newer restrictions, and I think the more we needed to change, even minor changes, actually helped to develop the design even further.

Han-Jo: I think we kind of ended up having different outcomes. Because it was a live project and it was not going to be printed until after our submissions, we had to resort to a way that would help us have an outcome before it would officially be printed. So then we went to think about the ways of printing and what we could do. I ended up screenprinting our publication. And that kind of allowed us to realise our initial visions for it, we could choose the metallic silver we wanted. And we could go for the paper stock and colour we wanted.  And then actually having it printed out and folded was good as well, because then we could have a physical reference from there to make changes further.

Who were you designing for?
How did that shape your design decisions?

Charlotte: For your project, would this be prospective students and parents?

Aaniyah: I think for us, designing this publication for the parents wasn’t really a consideration. It was more so the students themselves because we wanted to design a publication that would reflect our shared passion for graphic design. Even if they’re just newcomers coming into graphic design, how can we reflect that sort of excitement that got them into graphic design, and how that could sort of welcome them to our own course. Again, students to students. And one of the changes we sort of had to make after our submission outcome was incorporating more traditional course information, so we could balance what we wanted but also what others would want as well.

Han-Jo: Yeah, I think also when we were thinking about our target audience, we were also thinking about ourselves and what we would have wanted as a prospective student because we’ve been through the whole process. So it was thinking, oh… if it were a couple years back, what would I have wanted to see as a new student that maybe is thinking about graphic design, but is not sure about, you know, how it actually is. So I think that kind of pretty forward in our design, yeah.

Samiya: Yeah, as Aaniyah and Han-Jo said, we wanted the prospective students to be excited by what the course publication is. We wanted them to want to keep it and be like, ‘Oh, this is cool’. We really wanted to capture that excitement that we have and that buzz in the course to someone who is thinking about joining us.

Aaniyah: I would say it’s not a biased perspective from us, because any student in our year or even our course is a good representation of what it’s like studying in this course. So it wasn’t just our perspectives; it was the collective perspective of students in the course as well.

Charlotte: For me, I had a very similar way of thinking from the perspective of a prospective student because personally, how I engaged with degree shows was before university. When I was looking for which school to go to—I was going to different schools’ degree shows or looking at their relevant websites. In that way, I was thinking, ‘What would appeal contemporarily to the kind of new generation of upcoming designers?’ But at the same time, because the people attending these shows are from the creative industry and potential employers, I wanted the identity to show that we are a progressive graphic design course. A lot of schools might be—I think in London especially—might have a sense of heritage associated with it. They might be very print-focused, which a lot of us also love—me included—and isn’t a bad thing at all. However, realistically, we have to show that we can do different things. I think that’s also what played into my interest in exploring something like TouchDesigner and making bolder design choices such as the vibrant colors, because I didn’t want it to be conservative in that way. I wanted the identity to declare to the design industry that ‘We are here!’

What did you learn through navigating the different, and often competing, demands of design practice?

Charlotte: Personally, a restriction I’ve inadvertently put on my practice is that I’m not naturally inclined to collaborate or, you know, to work with people in a professional capacity. I’m certainly not against it, I just don’t go to it. I think if I had just mustered up that courage and combated that introvertedness to ask someone to work with me on the pitch, it might have led to a more dimensional pitch. Dimensional in the sense that the people I’m pitching to would have felt like, ‘Oh, this was worked on by multiple people, and I can see them and believe in them as designers who can represent me’.

In terms of the actual visual identity that manifested—because it is at the beginning stage of design development—I can’t really say how I would have done it differently because I am happy with the original concept

How about you three?

Samiya: I think because we’ve done so many things differently because of all the changes, we’ve had to change our way of working.

Aaniyah: What we would have done differently, we had already done.

Samiya: And because of all our different formats that we explored in the later half became the other potentials we could have done.

Han-Jo: The budget cut was after the actual project. So then looking back, maybe what we could have done differently was more in regards to the communication side with stakeholders.

Charlotte: So it’s really about communication. You know how with mine, it’s wanting to present differently to the people I’m pitching to. For you guys. It’s also trying to present more favorably and convincingly to your client who is funding the project?

Aaniyah: Maybe. Going back to what I said earlier, having more consideration of the realistic side to this publication and perhaps not completely ignoring the ‘traditional’ aspects of any course publication, and finding a way to have balanced this earlier on in the project.

Samiya: Could we say that we were encouraged to be experimental and not to worry about the budget? To not worry about the nitty-gritty things and just create. That’s what we were pushed to do.

Aaniyah: I think it was relevant in terms of our outcome towards the submission, but I think we didn’t really worry about it after submissions. We let the client, in a way, almost lead the second half of this project; we somewhat relied on what they wanted to do—maybe a bit more than we wanted to.

What lessons will you take from these experiences as you move forward in your design practice?

Samiya: I think for me, I now know how important communication is with the client, and also we know that things can change. We won’t get so set on an idea and wait for change, knowing that things will change through development.

Aaniyah: Yes, that’s one of the most positive things about this project. In the later part, it was the experience and almost having to let go of your design because of certain restrictions. But it was a great yet necessary learning curve that you’ll come across in any project with any client in the future.

Han-Jo: It’s also that everything is a chance for learning. Even though an element might not get used in the final outcome, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be used for other projects or to serve as a starting inspiration when you do like different projects in the future.

Charlotte: Completely agree. For myself, I’m going to speak specifically to the pitching space. The pitch was given at the end of term 1 — after that, I did multiple other identity pitches, and none of them came through as well. I don’t think those were cases of the identity being ‘invalid’. Sometimes it’s really just up to chance. So I think as I go into the industry and eventually become a midweight or senior designer, where they actually pitch to clients, it’s learning not to be too attached to your identity pitch. At the same time, I’m also not saying that I completely believe in my work and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s still about learning to be flexible and learning from whatever you’ve ‘failed’…I wouldn’t exactly call it failed. It’s also similar to you guys where it’s about, rather than the design itself, it’s about the communication of that design and how you physically present to people.

Han-Jo: I also think, at the end of the day, design is very subjective. If you’re pitching, for example, for us, we are also kind of pitching—you’re pitching an idea that might land nicely for you, but it might not land as well to other people because they have different experts. Patience, different aesthetics and things like that. So I guess it’s a fine line of thinking about your own design style, but also not compromising yourself to please the client too much. It’s learning that balance as we go on to work in industry.

Charlotte: On the topic of subjectivity, when the votes were tallied for the different show identity pitches, it was apparently a relatively even split. Sometimes even within clients themselves, there’s usually not just one singular person, right? There are multiple. In my case, it might have been the whole cohort split into, like, maybe 25 people voted for this, and 24 people voted for another one. Does that mean the one that got 24 votes is worse? Not really; it’s about accepting the situation for what it is.

Aaniyah: Moral of the story: don’t get too attached to any design.

This publication foregrounds the voices and work of students, while recognising the teaching, critique, and intellectual exchange that supported their development. With thanks to Aaniyah Khan, Han-Jo Tan, Samiya K. Bashaeb, and Charlotte Chan for sharing their experiences, reflections, and perspectives as emerging designers.