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After a year that brought mass-scale disruptions to all our lives, Shenkar’s annual visual communication exhibition, entitled “Proportions,” explores the theme of proportions in design. In the spirit of the times, the exhibition is held virtually, on an endless map divided into unique spaces, and features a range of designs, from first-year student work to graduation projects. Each project approaches the theme from a different angle: color and size ratios, the relationships between shapes, typographic ratios, social and historical relationships, the relationship between gender and the surrounding environment, and more. The exhibition’s opening event will feature a real-time illustration exhibit. And there’s more: guided tours, lectures, panels, parties, and a special closing event.

“If life is going to exist in a universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”-Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Under the circumstances, we are asking the public to keep things in proportion.

But wait a minute, what’s the proportion? Is it 2 meters? 200? 1000? The nuclear family? A capsule? At-risk populations? Is the growth linear? Or exponential? Is it a week? Two weeks? Two months? A year? Will it be like this forever?

The irony is that a microscopic lifeform has disrupted our lives on every scale. And what about us? We can’t even see it with the naked eye. We have no way to place it on any human scale of measurement or comprehension.

2021 began with the hope of last year being an exception to the norm. At the root of this hope is a belief in normality, in a status quo, a yardstick to measure our lives by.

As visual communication designers, we create systems of representation—representations of time and space, the environment, the body, society and economy, science and culture, the mind and imagination. And although the visual experience starts with what the human eye can see, these systems of representation seldom stay at the original scale. Therefore, one of a designer’s first moves is to create new scales and proportions. When creating a human figure representation, for instance, we use anatomy as a starting point—whether that means trying to stay faithful to realistic human proportions or trying to shrink, stretch, or otherwise exaggerate them. Another example is typography. We always look to the weight and leading as anchors, continually checking whether we’re in line with these proportions or how far we have strayed from them.

See the exhibition

Curated by Batia Kolton and Mushon Zer-Aviv.