Seen
A self-initiated project by a group of Asian creatives at BB.Seen is a self-initiated project by a group of Asian designers and creatives at BB. Leveraging digital design, creative strategy and visual expression, the project explores the interplay of personal and professional identities in a series of DMs.
What we did
- Digital design
- Creative strategy
- Art direction and identity
Seen is an online platform developed at the height of Covid, against the backdrop of pandemic-triggered racism. We, a group of East and Southeast Asian designers and creatives at Bakken & Bæck, created the initiative in conversation with colleagues across the industry.
In text conversations that unfold in a soft and speculative space, we explore the interplay of race, ethnicity and our creative practices. We invite you into our DMs — to read our stories, perspectives, and thoughts in progress — and hope you find something to relate to.
An invitation to the chat
With Seen, we wanted to contribute to the discussion around Asian identities that came to the fore during the pandemic, but that otherwise receives little attention. Through personal and intimate conversations, we explored questions of how our identities interweave with our professional ones, making sense of our own experiences through the act of sharing and relating.
The DM format allowed us to capture the ongoing process of navigating these identities in the industry — a process that often requires collective sense-making, and one that is forever in flux. Texts are not authoritative, nor are they static. They capture the perspective, mood or experience of a certain day, and are often where we reach out for and are provided with support. They are mundane yet personal, and served as a flexible frame to hold a multiplicity of perspectives and experiences. By opening up our DMs, we wanted to give visitors the feeling of being invited into a conversation they might not see otherwise.
For each conversational device, we sketched out different playful shapes, taking Tamagotchi aesthetics as a basis for inspiration.
A speculative but familiar universe
Seen is its own little universe, a space unto itself. The project references early messengers, like MSN and AOL, drawing on Y2K aesthetics and the magic of early hand-held devices. Both speculative and familiar, the softness and lightness of the space makes the stories more accessible, welcoming readers into the conversation. For the 3D models, our partners at Évoque Lab created devices that differed slightly for each conversation.
Seen was picked up widely across the industry, with features in It’s Nice That and Design Everywhere, and the platform winning gold in the digital design category of the 2023 Visuelt awards — recognising the best of Norway’s visual arts.
For the 3D models, we worked closely with Évoque Lab to create devices that differed slightly for each conversation.