Vinny Montag
I was born in Cadiz (Spain), where I studied mechanics and later art, specialising in sculpture. My artworks have been exhibited at several international shows, and some of my art pieces are part of Cadiz government art archives and private collections in Spain, Sweden, the USA, and the UK. In 2010, I moved to London and did a Foundation course in Art & Design at Central St Martins after I completed a BA in Multidisciplinary Design at Goldsmiths University later, I was awarded a scholarship from Burberry to study an MA in Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art.
From 2014 to 2020, I worked as a studio coordinator at Goldsmiths Design Department, as a visiting tutor at Goldsmiths Design and the London College of Fashion, and as a freelance exhibition producer for Furtherfield Gallery. Currently, I work as an Associate Professor and Program Director of our Masters of Design (MDes) at the Industrial Design Department at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China, teaching UG and PG students on Materials for Design, Innovation by Design, Industry Collaboration and also Final Year Students in the area of Social Design.
My work as a designer is multidisciplinary, and I work on projects for industry (Worldpay, Burberry, Zadok Studio, Sustrans, Barbican and Tabakalera Art Center). For the last few years, I have mainly focused on social design. Homelessness and Forced Migration are the topics of my recent projects. My art & design teaching is in the areas of Visual Communication, Sustainable Design Practice, Design Experience, Social Design and Futurism / Speculative Design.
From 2014 to 2020, I worked as a studio coordinator at Goldsmiths Design Department, as a visiting tutor at Goldsmiths Design and the London College of Fashion, and as a freelance exhibition producer for Furtherfield Gallery. Currently, I work as an Associate Professor and Program Director of our Masters of Design (MDes) at the Industrial Design Department at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China, teaching UG and PG students on Materials for Design, Innovation by Design, Industry Collaboration and also Final Year Students in the area of Social Design.
My work as a designer is multidisciplinary, and I work on projects for industry (Worldpay, Burberry, Zadok Studio, Sustrans, Barbican and Tabakalera Art Center). For the last few years, I have mainly focused on social design. Homelessness and Forced Migration are the topics of my recent projects. My art & design teaching is in the areas of Visual Communication, Sustainable Design Practice, Design Experience, Social Design and Futurism / Speculative Design.
less
InterestsView All (9)
Uploads
Papers by Vinny Montag
Conference Presentations by Vinny Montag
Design Projects by Vinny Montag
Back in London, where I live and work, I vectorised each letter and with the help of a colleague, expert in typography we designed “Paco”, a font that uses Paco’s hand alphabet. This font can be incorporated in any computer’s text processor program.
You might think that I might taken advantage of Paco’s type, but on the contrary my aim was, and is to use Paco’s writing (and other people in hard situations) to build a Font Library that can be downloaded from a a website for a small copyright fee.
But how does this idea benefits Paco and others?
Every person that downloads Paco’s type pays a small fee to an account of a charity that administrates Paco’s indirect income, in order to help him stop begging and with this economical support change Paco’s situation by using this new form of donation.
My proposal for Trampoline is to use this system with the refugees that you are helping. Ask them to write personal alphabets to create new types, Aisha, George, Manuel, etc. Each one would be able to generate indirect income by simply writing an alphabet.
Requirements for this project.
To make this project possible the main requirement is a web hosting that can locate a Font index and a program that distributes the downloads according to each font / Owner.
On the technical work the main part of the process is to vectorise the letters and symbols and then follow the steps in the appropriate software in order to make the font work and finally upload it the mentioned web.
Who can make this?
The same people that create the fonts. They would receive a digital training that make them capable to control the whole process. The idea is that the can be part of the project from A to Z.
Replacing the PIN number is a real challenge. The Personal identification Number has been in use for the last 60 years, enough time to proof its safety and functionality, therefore being so far the most popular systems for card payments and bank transactions.
Then why replacing the PIN? The focus for this brief would be to reassure that the PIN number can be transformed instead that being fully replaced. My personal belief is that there is room to develop an intuitive design solution based on the same principal but without digits
For this brief I have envisioned a smart phone logging system of tapping on a tactile screen that replaces the numbers for images. Why images? Images are away easier to memorise than words or numbers, and we use them constantly in the form of association to remember words, people or numbers.
Since the appearance of computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc, visual language dominates our interaction with the virtual world. Images, icons or emojis, have become the fastest way to communicate our opinion and moods, specially the young generations, then why not using personalised images as a password?
At the moment this design is focus towards Banking Transactions but it is also ideal as an Identification Systems that requires a form of PIN to log in.
What differs this system from digit based logging systems?
Allan Paivio's dual-coding theory is a basis of picture superiority effect. Paivio claims that pictures have advantages over words with regards to coding and retrieval of stored memory because pictures are coded more easily and can be retrieved from symbolic mode, while the dual coding process using words is more difficult for both coding and retrieval. Another explanation of the higher recall in picture superiority is due to the higher familiarity or frequency of pictured objects
(Asch & Ebenholtz, 1962). According to dual- coding theory (1971, 1986), memory exists either (or both) verbally or "imaginally". Concrete concepts presented as pictures are encoded into both
systems; however, abstract concepts are recorded only verbally. In psychology, the effect has implications for salience in attribution theory as well as the availability heuristic. It is also relevant to advertising and user interface design (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_superiority_effect).
The second feature that makes this system very effective and safe is the personalisation by the user as these ones are unique. Also the amount of mosaic images sequence which multiplies the safety dramatically.
The Future in 16 Scenarios
The aim of this design proposal is to provide a platform to invite citizens to reinvent the future of Cadiz.
Founded by the Phoenicians, Cadiz is the oldest continuously
inhabited city in Spain and one of the oldest in Western Europe.
Situated on a narrow slice of land in the south of Spain, it is surrounded by the sea‚ Cadiz is Colonial Andalusian City with a wealthy past, well preserved and full historical and architectonical landmarks.
In different times in the history Cadiz, this city has been commercially crucial and culturally rich. Its citizens modern and cultivated. Since the early 80,s of the last century, with the closed downs of the docks, main industrial activity and source of income, this city lives in a limbo, and despite of its amazing potential, Cadiz lacks of a clear city model and direction. Somehow Cadiz exists immersed in its own idiosyncrasy, away from the rest of the world.
This project applies speculative and fictional design to propose a
number of Future Scenarios, carefully chosen to experience 16 different fictional possibilities of Cadiz in the future. A timeline of 75 years,
starting in 2017 and ending in 2092, shows 4 categories (RETRO / AMAZING / DISASTER / IDEAL) and each one contains 4 scenarios.
Objects and narratives of real past events, communicate these
imaginary scenarios in order to immerse the audience into these new
situations and fantasise with fictional events that could be real in the
future.
The methodology employed in this project is designed to create
believable possibilities that can perhaps give the citizens of Cadiz new directions todesigv the model of city that would have never imagined before.
Link to film here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-pG8bNnTnU&t=1s
Workshops by Vinny Montag
(Workshop Structure)
This workshop has been designed to use Fictional and Speculative design as the tools to build a conceptual Museum of the Refuse.
The idea is to enable the participants to create a number of future scenarios of their museum by using fictional narratives and timelines. This design process will help you to envision new possibilities for your museum.
The structure begins with a number of questions that shall invite you to create the context in which this museum sits on in the world. These questions are logical and essential, and the answers shall provide of a “Pool of Facts” that will definitely help you to see the big picture of this museum and the world around it. Also the aim of these questions is to take into account how society works and its implications. The museum is not a separated entity, on the contrary, the museum is born as an extension of the society.
What is an Affordance in design?
Affordances are clues about how an object should be used, typically provided by the object itself or its context. For example, even if you've never seen a coffee mug before, its use is fairly natural. The handle is shaped for easy grasping and the vessel has a large opening at the top with an empty well inside. “The most important design tool is that of coherence and understandability which comes through an explicit, perceivable conceptual model. Affordances specify the range of possible activities, but affordances are of little use if they are not visible to the users. Hence, the art of the designer is to ensure that the desired, relevant actions are readily perceivable” (Norman, D. A. (1990). The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Doubleday).
This workshop explores the possibilities of finding affordances in objects or topics. The main focus of this exercise is to increse the perception of what "things" can afford, and with the help of narrative and fiction create new objects with new uses, or new lands with new scenarios. Envisioning Affordances help us to comeback to fantasy but with a different approach and analysing what possibilities we can develop with this "Affordable" design methodology.
Art Manifestations by Vinny Montag
My illustrations aims to homage all these lost lives.
Experiments by Vinny Montag
THOUGHTS in text and video by Vinny Montag
Drafts by Vinny Montag
Back in London, where I live and work, I vectorised each letter and with the help of a colleague, expert in typography we designed “Paco”, a font that uses Paco’s hand alphabet. This font can be incorporated in any computer’s text processor program.
You might think that I might taken advantage of Paco’s type, but on the contrary my aim was, and is to use Paco’s writing (and other people in hard situations) to build a Font Library that can be downloaded from a a website for a small copyright fee.
But how does this idea benefits Paco and others?
Every person that downloads Paco’s type pays a small fee to an account of a charity that administrates Paco’s indirect income, in order to help him stop begging and with this economical support change Paco’s situation by using this new form of donation.
My proposal for Trampoline is to use this system with the refugees that you are helping. Ask them to write personal alphabets to create new types, Aisha, George, Manuel, etc. Each one would be able to generate indirect income by simply writing an alphabet.
Requirements for this project.
To make this project possible the main requirement is a web hosting that can locate a Font index and a program that distributes the downloads according to each font / Owner.
On the technical work the main part of the process is to vectorise the letters and symbols and then follow the steps in the appropriate software in order to make the font work and finally upload it the mentioned web.
Who can make this?
The same people that create the fonts. They would receive a digital training that make them capable to control the whole process. The idea is that the can be part of the project from A to Z.
Replacing the PIN number is a real challenge. The Personal identification Number has been in use for the last 60 years, enough time to proof its safety and functionality, therefore being so far the most popular systems for card payments and bank transactions.
Then why replacing the PIN? The focus for this brief would be to reassure that the PIN number can be transformed instead that being fully replaced. My personal belief is that there is room to develop an intuitive design solution based on the same principal but without digits
For this brief I have envisioned a smart phone logging system of tapping on a tactile screen that replaces the numbers for images. Why images? Images are away easier to memorise than words or numbers, and we use them constantly in the form of association to remember words, people or numbers.
Since the appearance of computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc, visual language dominates our interaction with the virtual world. Images, icons or emojis, have become the fastest way to communicate our opinion and moods, specially the young generations, then why not using personalised images as a password?
At the moment this design is focus towards Banking Transactions but it is also ideal as an Identification Systems that requires a form of PIN to log in.
What differs this system from digit based logging systems?
Allan Paivio's dual-coding theory is a basis of picture superiority effect. Paivio claims that pictures have advantages over words with regards to coding and retrieval of stored memory because pictures are coded more easily and can be retrieved from symbolic mode, while the dual coding process using words is more difficult for both coding and retrieval. Another explanation of the higher recall in picture superiority is due to the higher familiarity or frequency of pictured objects
(Asch & Ebenholtz, 1962). According to dual- coding theory (1971, 1986), memory exists either (or both) verbally or "imaginally". Concrete concepts presented as pictures are encoded into both
systems; however, abstract concepts are recorded only verbally. In psychology, the effect has implications for salience in attribution theory as well as the availability heuristic. It is also relevant to advertising and user interface design (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_superiority_effect).
The second feature that makes this system very effective and safe is the personalisation by the user as these ones are unique. Also the amount of mosaic images sequence which multiplies the safety dramatically.
The Future in 16 Scenarios
The aim of this design proposal is to provide a platform to invite citizens to reinvent the future of Cadiz.
Founded by the Phoenicians, Cadiz is the oldest continuously
inhabited city in Spain and one of the oldest in Western Europe.
Situated on a narrow slice of land in the south of Spain, it is surrounded by the sea‚ Cadiz is Colonial Andalusian City with a wealthy past, well preserved and full historical and architectonical landmarks.
In different times in the history Cadiz, this city has been commercially crucial and culturally rich. Its citizens modern and cultivated. Since the early 80,s of the last century, with the closed downs of the docks, main industrial activity and source of income, this city lives in a limbo, and despite of its amazing potential, Cadiz lacks of a clear city model and direction. Somehow Cadiz exists immersed in its own idiosyncrasy, away from the rest of the world.
This project applies speculative and fictional design to propose a
number of Future Scenarios, carefully chosen to experience 16 different fictional possibilities of Cadiz in the future. A timeline of 75 years,
starting in 2017 and ending in 2092, shows 4 categories (RETRO / AMAZING / DISASTER / IDEAL) and each one contains 4 scenarios.
Objects and narratives of real past events, communicate these
imaginary scenarios in order to immerse the audience into these new
situations and fantasise with fictional events that could be real in the
future.
The methodology employed in this project is designed to create
believable possibilities that can perhaps give the citizens of Cadiz new directions todesigv the model of city that would have never imagined before.
Link to film here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-pG8bNnTnU&t=1s
(Workshop Structure)
This workshop has been designed to use Fictional and Speculative design as the tools to build a conceptual Museum of the Refuse.
The idea is to enable the participants to create a number of future scenarios of their museum by using fictional narratives and timelines. This design process will help you to envision new possibilities for your museum.
The structure begins with a number of questions that shall invite you to create the context in which this museum sits on in the world. These questions are logical and essential, and the answers shall provide of a “Pool of Facts” that will definitely help you to see the big picture of this museum and the world around it. Also the aim of these questions is to take into account how society works and its implications. The museum is not a separated entity, on the contrary, the museum is born as an extension of the society.
What is an Affordance in design?
Affordances are clues about how an object should be used, typically provided by the object itself or its context. For example, even if you've never seen a coffee mug before, its use is fairly natural. The handle is shaped for easy grasping and the vessel has a large opening at the top with an empty well inside. “The most important design tool is that of coherence and understandability which comes through an explicit, perceivable conceptual model. Affordances specify the range of possible activities, but affordances are of little use if they are not visible to the users. Hence, the art of the designer is to ensure that the desired, relevant actions are readily perceivable” (Norman, D. A. (1990). The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Doubleday).
This workshop explores the possibilities of finding affordances in objects or topics. The main focus of this exercise is to increse the perception of what "things" can afford, and with the help of narrative and fiction create new objects with new uses, or new lands with new scenarios. Envisioning Affordances help us to comeback to fantasy but with a different approach and analysing what possibilities we can develop with this "Affordable" design methodology.
My illustrations aims to homage all these lost lives.