Joshua Bausch, “What We Made of It”
Mentor: Katie Martin-Muerer, Art &Design
Poster #5

In March of 2021, in the heart of the pandemic, Senior Lecturer Katie Martin-Meurer of University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts sent out a message via Instagram, calling on students, alumni, and community to reach out if they would like to take a walk with her. The goal was to reconnect in a time of disconnection and rebuild a sense of community that isolation had shoved a wedge into. For this project we compiled a book of Martin-Meurer’s reflections from these walks, first documented in a series of Instagram posts. Key to this project were the concepts of memorializing and celebrating human endurance. Through design, we were able to make the book an object that unto itself became a trophy, an archive of a community that rose to the challenge of trying times. Familiar visual elements like shoelaces were used allegorically, leading the viewer through the book while doubling as a metaphor for the paths of our lives. Large, full-bleed images (images that go to the edge of the page) opposite non-hierarchical text positioned people at the heart of our design. The project received widespread appreciation with requests for the final product, the book, to be sent to people worldwide. This project has become not just a testament of vitality to the people featured, but also an example of how important community is, how people desire a connection with others, and how design can foster all these things.