Gabriel Drozdov
This Is For You:
A handbook for design students
Hi! My name is Gabriel. I’m a designer, coder, and teacher. Since coming to RISD, I’ve developed a design practice based around building tools, platforms, toys, and resources. All those things come together as websites. What I love about websites is that they are interactive experiences I can give to you directly no matter how far apart we are. They’re easy to access without the need to download any fancy software and they work on virtually every device. And websites can do a whole lot more than what we’re used to seeing. In my work, I try to explore the limits of these kinds of experiences to see what meaningful stories I can tell to my audiences. You can find my personal site here: https://gabrieldrozdov.com/
This Is For You is a handbook for design students. It is a collection of stories, projects, and conversations on the subjects of design, code, and teaching. The book’s first part, “Learning,” contains stories about the experiences that shaped me as a designer. The second part, “Making,” summarizes the projects that taught me how to design. The third and final part, “Sharing,” is a series of conversations with the people that helped me along the way. In collecting and publishing these resources, This Is For You is an attempt to create an open-source example of what a career in design can look like. Because that career is still in-progress, this thesis continues to grow, too. You can find it here: https://thisisforyou.gabrieldrozdov.com/
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Too Much Type is my type foundry, which is an organization that designs and distributes fonts. My foundry’s focus is on experimental, animated typefaces and digital type specimens. Every project is open-source, which means that you're free to use or edit my fonts and code however you like. You can find the foundry’s website here: https://toomuchtype.com/
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Fontbox is an interactive animated typography toy. On the site, you can type in some letters or words and then sequence them to change color, sound, font, and more. You can find Fontbox here: https://fontbox.barcoloudly.com/
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Earworm is another interactive animated typography toy. On the site, you can select a musical key to generate an “earworm” in, which is an autonomous typographic instrument. Each earworm features controls for musical note, octave, sound, tempo, and volume. You can find Earworm here: https://earworm.barcoloudly.com/
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The Variable Fonts Workshop was a course I taught at RISD that featured a custom-built class website. The website is a type testing tool for playing with variable fonts and a showcase of student work. The site features multiple “instruments” for playing with fonts to discover the capabilities of and potential use cases for variable fonts. You can find the class website here: https://variablefonts.gdwithgd.com/
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Pixel Weaver (2.0) is a pattern generator that manipulates a series of source images to create dynamic compositions. It features an extensive set of user controls to set the source inputs and types of motion. You can find Pixel Weaver here: https://pixelweaver.noreplica.com/
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Highlights from the Impermanent Collection is the digital exhibition component of the RISD Graphic Design MFA Biennial from 2023. It features a grid-based floor plan that recreates the exact layout of the in-person exhibition as a video game. You can find the exhibition site here: https://mfabiennial2023.risd.gd/
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Notes from Neither Here nor There is a series of poetic microsites that meditate on what it means to see and experience an image or video. Each microsite focuses on a different real-world location and lets the user interact in a unique way with imagery of that location. You can find the collection of sites here: https://notes.noreplica.com/
