Boston Symphony Orchestra

The brief: build a flexible visual system for a five-night concert series — not five posters, but a set of rules that could make them. I started from my professor’s p5.js noise sketch and let the work emerge from parameters instead of taste. Change the system, and every poster changes with it.

Work emerges from the rules. Design the system, and the artifacts fall out of it.

Before each poster, I tuned a handful of parameters to the feeling of that night’s programme — a calm Mozart opener, a triumphant Tchaikovsky, a monumental Beethoven anniversary. The same code produces all five; the piece decides the colour, the form, and the density.

Five event posters — same rules, five feelings. The colour comes from the mood, the pattern from the character of the piece, the density from its energy. Consistent identity; infinitely scalable.

Half of this project was learning to code — vibe-coding with AI, then wrestling the control back with parameters. That’s the lesson I’ll keep: generative tools don’t replace the designer, they move the decision up a level — from the mark to the rule. Todd’s critique pushed further: design the documentation with the system’s own principles, not outside them. That’s really a question about coherence — does the thinking go all the way down? This is the direction I’m committing to: computational, parametric, systems-level design, where I author the rules and let the work emerge.