Development:
Voices of Creativity
Design

Early Visual Exploration and Moodboards

I began my design process with three exploratory moodboards: Modernist, Space, and Digital. Each one channelled a different sensibility. The intention was not to land on a final direction but to test how different visual logics might carry the concept of diverse voices.

The Modernist board leaned into mid-century design principles. Grids. Sans-serif type. Primary colour accents. The aim was clarity. A kind of structured neutrality. I was drawn to the idea of visual order creating legibility for complex stories. But as the board developed, the tone felt cold. Too impersonal. It lacked the emotional resonance I was looking for. The Modernist influence promised coherence, but at the cost of warmth. I began to see how a rigid system could accidentally quiet the very voices I was trying to amplify. There was a risk of making the platform feel more like a document than a conversation.
The second board explored the cosmic. Star fields, voids, planetary textures. I was chasing scale. I wanted to evoke possibility. A visual field where any voice might echo. At first, this felt expansive. The sense of openness seemed to support the project’s goal of inclusion. But as the board evolved, the abstraction grew too detached. The visuals felt poetic, but distant. They didn’t connect with the texture of lived experience. Accent. Geography. Class. These are grounded. They are intimate. The Space direction was conceptually interesting but emotionally out of reach. It created atmosphere but not empathy. The third board looked to contemporary visual culture. Glitches, overlays, interface fragments, pixel textures. I wanted to mirror how fragmented voices exist in digital space. How creative identity is shaped by both visibility and distortion. There was energy in this board. Urgency. Movement. But it also felt overstimulating. The glitch aesthetic, while compelling, began to feel like a filter. It added friction where I needed softness. The Digital board captured noise and fragmentation, but it risked making the platform feel more about aesthetics than stories.

Reflection
Each direction brought something of value. Modernism gave structure. Space suggested openness. Digital offered motion. But none of them held all three. And none of them felt grounded enough to carry real voices without distortion. This moment of recognition shaped the next phase of the project. Rather than choosing one visual mode, I began to borrow selectively. To work across the gap between visual clarity and emotional presence. What I needed was rhythm. A tone that could shift from stillness to insistence. A visual system that could hold tension without collapsing into chaos or control.

These early moodboards were never meant to define the platform. Their value was in what they revealed. Not what to do, but what to avoid. They taught me that clarity without feeling is not enough. That abstraction without grounding is not enough. That energy without care is not enough. In response, I moved toward a more integrated approach. Minimalism, but with texture. Structure, but with disruption. A palette and grid that allow stories to breathe. A visual rhythm that respects voice.

This process marked the beginning of something more resolved. The moodboards served as failures worth learning from. Not in concept, but in tone. They helped me locate the space where Voices of Creativity could live: between order and openness, between systems and story.

Typographic Systems and Geometric Forms

As the project moved beyond moodboards, I turned toward fundamentals. Shape, type, layout. This was the beginning of a different kind of exploration. Less about image, more about structure. I began working with geometric forms as a framework for composition. A triangle. A square. A circle. Each one became a tool for thinking about rhythm, voice, and balance.

This was a speculative phase. I wasn’t aiming for finished outcomes. I used the forms to test how layout could carry tone. Each shape suggested a different spatial and emotional logic. The triangle introduced tension. Its pointed corners and asymmetry created friction. It felt like a raised voice or an interruption. A sharp idea that demands space. The square brought calm. A stable grid. A rhythm of repetition. It felt like a pause. A silence that holds weight. The kind of stillness that comes with considered thought or with someone being listened to, not rushed. The circle suggested flow. Its curves implied breath, continuity, an ongoing dialogue. It reminded me of soundwaves or a mouth forming a word. It carried a sense of openness and inclusion. Using these forms, I began building layouts that held multiple tones at once. A triangle in the corner might carry a bold statement. A square of white space might balance it, letting the page breathe. A circular pull-quote might float between them, softening the dynamic.

These compositions were not decorative. They were ways of working out how voice and silence could coexist on a screen. I began to think about text blocks as moments of speech, as volume, as texture. Some needed to be clear and loud. Others quiet and reflective. This process became a study in contrast. I saw how too many angular shapes made the design feel aggressive, like it was shouting. Too much square order made it feel static, safe, almost detached. The best outcomes came when I allowed different forms to share the page. Tension next to silence. Structure beside softness.

Modernist Lineage: Bayer, Tschichold, and Müller-Brockmann

Throughout the design process, I found myself in ongoing dialogue with the ideas of three key modernist figures: Herbert Bayer, Jan Tschichold, and Josef Müller-Brockmann. Their work provided a foundation, a reference point, and in some cases, a provocation. I looked to them not only for visual influence, but for their ideological positions on clarity, function, and the role of the designer.

From Bayer, I drew more than just the lowercase experiment. His broader Bauhaus thinking shaped my early approach. Bayer believed in reducing design to its essentials, stripping away historical baggage and typographic ornament. His Universal alphabet, developed in 1925, was geometric and simplified. It represented a new typographic rationalism, a modernist belief that design should align with the mechanical precision of its time. In Voices of Creativity, this translated into my decision to use lowercase typography not as a visual gimmick, but as a conceptual gesture. Like Bayer, I was looking for a typographic tone that felt unpretentious and functionally democratic.

Jan Tschichold’s 1928 manifesto Die neue Typographie provided further grounding. He famously stated that “the essence of the New Typography is clarity.” This principle became a guiding question for me. Tschichold rejected the decorative and symmetrical layouts of the past, insisting that every typographic decision must serve the reader. Function before form. In response, I built the platform using strong asymmetry, generous white space, and a clear visual hierarchy. Text alignment and grid placement were all designed to direct attention, not to perform style. Every design choice had to justify itself. If an element didn’t aid understanding, it was removed. This strict economy of means created a discipline within the layout process. In this sense, the platform aligns with Tschichold’s ethic of minimal, purposeful communication, a digital translation of the New Typography’s intent.

Josef Müller-Brockmann offered the most structural influence. His work as a Swiss modernist pushed the grid to its fullest expression. He advocated for a typographic system that was rational, repeatable, and as free as possible from personal style. In his writing, he spoke about creating design that removed the personality of the designer, allowing content to speak directly. This was echoed in Voices of Creativity through my use of NB International Pro and a tightly defined grid system. Most interface elements align to a modular baseline and column structure. There are no expressive gestures, no signature visual flourishes. The neutrality of the platform, its refusal to editorialise through type or layout, owes a debt to Müller-Brockmann’s principles. I was interested in how neutrality could function politically, how a quiet presentation could build trust.

But working with this lineage also required critique. I did not follow it blindly. These designers operated in specific historical contexts. Their notions of objectivity, neutrality, and universality were shaped by modernist ideals that sometimes ignored subjectivity, cultural specificity, or emotion. As I designed, I found myself asking where their legacy served this project, and where it needed revision.

I kept Bayer’s lowercase typography, but infused it with warmth through colour and spacing. I followed Tschichold’s clarity, but challenged his rigidity by allowing moments of softness and pause. I echoed Müller-Brockmann’s grid discipline, but introduced intentional disruptions when the narrative demanded emphasis. In each case, the influence was present, but adapted.

The result is not modernist purity, but something more reflexive. A platform that values clarity, but not at the expense of personality. A design that respects form, but does not let it dominate. A quiet visual language that listens, informed by the past, but responsive to the complexities of today.

Lowercase Typography as a Political Aesthetic Choice

In designing the Voices of Creativity platform, I returned often to the Bauhaus. Not only for its visual clarity, but for its typographic politics. One moment that stayed with me was Herbert Bayer’s 1925 Universal type experiment. In it, Bayer abolished capital letters altogether. He saw the division between upper and lower case as redundant. Two alphabets for one language, when only one was needed.

The Bauhaus even printed official stationery with a bold declaration: “we write everything in lowercase, as this saves us time, why have two alphabets for only one word […]? why write in capital letters when one does not speak in capital letters?” The tone is pragmatic. But the choice was not just about efficiency. It was about equity. Removing capitals removed a hierarchy. It was a design decision against privilege.

Inspired by this, I adopted an all-lowercase typographic style across the platform. It was not a decorative flourish. It was a quiet political act. Lowercase typography signals a shift in tone, informal, conversational, unpretentious. It aligns with voices that are often overlooked or corrected. It levels the playing field.

In this context, lowercase becomes more than a style. It becomes a stance. A subtle resistance to the authority often implied by capitalisation. A way to let all voices speak from the same typographic footing. As with Bayer’s work, the aim is clarity, but also humility. This visual softness supports the project’s ethics to centre voice without hierarchy.

Choosing NB International Pro: Neo-Grotesk Clarity and Neutrality

To support this typographic direction, I selected NB International™ Pro as the primary typeface. It is a contemporary neo-grotesk sans-serif, designed by Stefan Gandl and Neubau, that draws on the legacy of the International Style. Its tone is calm. Its forms are clear. It has no typographic ego.

NB International Pro was chosen for its even rhythm, especially in lowercase. Its generous x-height creates a uniform typographic texture. This matters when entire paragraphs are set without capitals. The type flows. There are no sharp interruptions. No sudden jumps in scale. The result is a kind of visual breath. A steady, measured voice.

The typeface’s design is precise but soft. Each curve is carefully tuned. The terminals are gently rounded. The overall effect is warm, without losing its structural integrity. It doesn’t speak loudly. It listens. This is exactly what I wante, a typeface that could hold space without dominating it.

In this way, NB International Pro supports the platform’s reflective tone. It creates room for others to speak. It disappears, letting content take priority. Its neutrality is not a claim to objectivity, but a gesture of care. As the team behind the TwentyThree™ brand (who also use this typeface) put it, “we’re never shouting, but talking.” That idea guided the typography throughout.

This echoes the Bauhaus tradition. Form follows function. And in this project, the function is quiet clarity. The function is voice. In choosing a typeface that recedes into the background, I was creating the conditions for others to be heard.

Of course, neutrality is never complete. As has been argued, the neutrality of typefaces like Helvetica is a designed fiction. But sometimes that fiction is useful. NB International Pro allows that fiction to work in service of others. It holds space without comment. It becomes a typographic frame, not a message.

This typographic choice sits comfortably within the framework of Critical Reflexive Minimalism. It is minimalism, not as style, but as position. It resists excess. It supports content. It remains aware of its own presence, while refusing to perform. In a project concerned with class, access, and bias, this neutrality becomes not a silence, but an invitation. The platform is not here to speak over others. It is here to help them speak clearly, and to be heard.

Gradients and Image Manipulation for Mood

Up to this point, the design of Voices of Creativity had been shaped primarily through typography, geometric composition, and layout. It carried a certain clarity. Structured. Minimal. But it lacked something deeper. There was little atmosphere. No sense of emotion or texture. The voice was present, but the tone had not yet arrived. To respond, I turned to image-making. But not in the traditional sense. I wasn’t interested in illustrative clarity or direct representation. Instead, I wanted something closer to mood. A visual language that could hold feeling without overwhelming the content. That search led me to gradient overlays. The reference point was Japanese visual culture. I was drawn to the way soft gradients are used to wash over images, creating a sense of transition and introspection. These treatments often feel poetic. They hover between presence and disappearance. I began experimenting with similar techniques, using portraits and abstract photographs as base layers, then overlaying soft gradients in colours like dusk blue, pale pink, warm orange.

The results shifted the tone immediately. A standard portrait became something else. Veiled. Dreamlike. A little distant, but emotionally closer. The gradient removed detail, but introduced feeling. A person speaking, when covered by a soft orange-pink gradient, became not just a face but a presence. The viewer was invited to listen before judging.

This visual treatment served two purposes. First, it introduced mood. Colour became a backdrop to voice. A pale violet might hold a moment of reflection. A warm gradient might carry resilience or resolve. These were cues, not commands. Quiet invitations to feel. Second, the gradient became a form of protection. This platform is about voice, about how people are heard and misheard. I did not want visuals to work against that goal. A clear image can unintentionally introduce bias. A viewer might make assumptions about a speaker’s age, race, gender, or class before even reading their story. By softening the visual information, I could create a space that foregrounded listening.

This became a principle: show less, but suggest more. Let the colour speak, not the face. Let tone replace detail. The gradients functioned as a kind of ethical veil. Not to erase, but to hold. Not to obscure, but to respect. Visually, this marked a shift. The stark black and white palette gave way to a more atmospheric register. Colour returned, but it was quiet. Intentional. The design still leaned minimalist, but with softness introduced. The gradients did not decorate. They supported.

Conceptually, the gradient became a metaphor for how we listen. Like tuning into a story on the radio. You hear tone before content. You feel something before forming a picture. That ambiguity felt important. It created space for empathy to precede assumption.

From then on, I used these gradient treatments sparingly. Each one had to carry mood or offer protection. Ideally both. No image was added for effect. Each one had to serve the story.

This process taught me that minimalism is not the absence of emotion. It is its careful handling. The gradients introduced feeling without excess. They allowed for care without spectacle. In a project about voice, they offered a visual parallel to quietness, to listening, to holding space.

Speculating with an AI Interface

As the platform took shape, I began thinking forward. What might interaction look like beyond scrolling or clicking? Could the user engage not just with the content, but with the platform itself? These questions led to the development of a speculative element, a minimalist AI interface.

This wasn’t part of the original design plan. It emerged as a conceptual extension. If Voices of Creativity is about voice, listening, and bias, then what happens when the platform itself gains a voice? Could it act as a guide? Or a mirror?

I approached this carefully. Introducing AI into a project about human expression carries risks. It could support the work. It could also distract from it. I kept the execution minimal. The interface appears as a quiet prompt. A blinking cursor in a text field. Empty. Open. Waiting. Alongside it, a single line of help text offers a suggestion. Not a question, exactly. More like a thought.

“Ask me about the voice you’re afraid to use.”
“Type what you wanted to say but didn’t.”
“Tell me where your voice disappears.”

These prompts are not instructional. They are poetic. Slightly disarming. They aim to spark reflection. Their tone mirrors the rest of the platform, slow, quiet, and emotionally alert. The AI interface does not dominate the page. It sits at the edge of visibility. A small icon. A gentle transition. The idea is that those who are curious will find it. And those who do will be met not with spectacle, but with a kind of digital listening.

I was inspired by minimalist chatbot design, and by the broader concept of critical design fictions. This interface is not about function. It is about speculation. It asks: what if your interface could hold space for your uncertainty? What if it responded with insight instead of instruction? In the imagined dialogue, a user might type a question. Something vulnerable. Something unfinished. The AI would respond not with facts, but with a quote from the research. A thought from another user. A counter-question. Its role is not to resolve, but to deepen. Technically, I didn’t build a working AI. What I created were prototypes. Storyboards. Mock interactions. Enough to test the tone. Enough to imagine the impact. Even in this speculative form, it added something to the experience. It invited the user to pause. To turn inward. To join the conversation, not just observe it.

This small intervention shifted the platform from a presentation space to a dialogue space. It suggested that the work was not finished when the last story ended. It continued in the mind of the visitor. There was also a political layer. Voice technology is not neutral. Voice assistants often struggle with regional accents. AI speech recognition has been shown to encode bias. By including a speculative AI in this project, I was nodding to these tensions. Raising questions about who machines are trained to understand. And who they are trained to ignore.

By giving the interface a minimal, poetic quality, I hoped to reframe the role of AI. It is not there to lead. It is there to listen. It becomes a companion to human stories. Not a replacement.

This decision felt aligned with the project’s wider tone. The AI interface does not provide answers. It creates space for more questions. It does not mimic neutrality. It holds discomfort. It speaks in fragments. And it listens more than it talks.

Merging Elements into a Refined Design Direction

In the final stretch of this design journey, I stepped back and looked at everything as a whole. It was time to refine and merge all the elements, the typographic system and geometric layouts, the logomark and identity framework, the interactive rhythm from early prototypes, the gradient-treated imagery, and the speculative AI component into a cohesive platform. What emerged was a design direction anchored in four key principles: rhythm, restraint, space, and emotional tone.

Rhythm
The platform now moves with a considered cadence. From the way content is sectioned to the interplay of quiet and loud elements, the experience follows a deliberate beat. This rhythm is what prevents the platform from feeling either static or overwhelming. A dense passage of narrative might be followed by a moment of stillness, a single quote on a bare background, or a full-bleed wash of colour. These pauses are purposeful. They reflect the rhythm of conversation and storytelling. There are moments to speak and moments to listen. The design carries this logic throughout, allowing users to breathe with the content rather than rush through it.

Restraint
A key principle that kept returning was this: say less, but say it clearly. The final design exercises restraint across colour, typography, and interaction. The palette remains minimal. Gradients are only used where they add emotional or conceptual depth. Typography remains mostly uniform, with only subtle shifts in weight or style to mark changes in tone. I also made a conscious decision to set all typography in lowercase. This was not a stylistic flourish, but a conceptual choice one that aligns with the platform’s values of equity and informality. Lowercase type resists hierarchy. It levels tone. It removes the implied emphasis of capitalisation and lets the words feel quieter, more personal. Technically, it contributes to the minimalist tone. Symbolically, it suggests that no voice on this platform is above another.

Restraint also shapes how users interact. The AI prompt is present, but unobtrusive. Navigation is simple and intuitive. There are no complex menus, no visual effects that distract. The goal is to let users move through the platform without friction. This design calm is intentional. It ensures that delicate conversations around bias, class, and voice are held in a space that does not overwhelm.

Space
White space became a central design element. Not just for aesthetics, but for meaning. The final layouts use generous margins, ample line spacing, and regular moments of visual pause. Empty space is not absence. It is invitation. It gives every voice room to be heard. Every quote, every story, is given space to breathe. In doing so, the platform reclaims what is often seen as a luxury in visual design space and offers it in service of voices that are usually pushed to the edges.

Conceptually, this spaciousness signals value. In high-end branding, space is often used to elevate. Here, that same visual language is used to uplift the marginalised. A working-class voice presented with as much space as any headline. A quiet quote occupying an entire screen. This use of space creates rhythm, but also dignity. It allows readers to pause, reflect, and listen again.

Emotional Tone
The platform’s tone had to match the emotional complexity of its content. The final visual language is gentle, but unafraid. The gentleness comes from the soft gradients, the slowed pacing, the careful typographic choices. The unafraid part shows in the content itself in the honesty of the stories, in the moments when the design steps aside to let a difficult truth stand alone.

Tone guided every decision. When in doubt, I asked: does this feel sincere? Does this honour the story? If the answer was no, it was revised or removed. This emotional filter was essential. It ensured the platform never slipped into spectacle or detachment. It kept the focus on empathy and listening.

The colour psychology supported this tone. There are no aggressive reds. No hyper-saturated blues. Instead, there are deep greys, warm oranges, and muted pinks. Each colour was chosen for its emotional register. Not to impress, but to support. The typography mirrors this with clean, open forms. There are no italics that scream, no capitals that dominate. Even in bold, the type remains grounded.

Bringing it Together
All of these principles work together. Rhythm guides the user. Restraint holds back ego. Space honours the voice. Tone carries the feeling. Together, they serve the platform’s mission to interrogate how accent and class bias shape creative access, and to offer a space where these conversations can unfold thoughtfully.

What I find most fulfilling is how the design now mirrors the message. A sudden shift in alignment becomes a way to visualise interruption. An open margin becomes a way to hold space. A lowercase headline becomes a visual cue that no voice here is shouting for dominance. These are not metaphors applied after the fact. They are the outcome of a design process shaped by listening.

This journey has been about unlearning as much as designing. I had to unlearn the instinct to over-style. To fill every frame. To chase visual complexity. What replaced it was a quiet discipline. A clarity that emerged only by staying close to the stories. The final design is minimalist, but it is not hollow. It is quiet, but not passive. It speaks when it needs to. And it holds silence when that is more powerful.

In the end, the platform does not try to impress. It invites. It waits. It creates room for those who have often been asked to adjust, to flatten, to fit in. It does not speak over them. It speaks with them. Or it steps aside.

In closing this final journal entry, I feel a quiet pride. The design process was not linear. It curved. It folded back on itself. It asked questions that didn’t always have answers. But the result is something that feels honest. A platform that is ready to hold real voices. One that listens as much as it speaks.