Design thinking, visual articulation and a love for learning guide my actions as a graphic and interactive designer, a design educator, a cross disciplinarian, and a digital conceptualist. This is a selection of my projects, essays and experiences. To learn more about me please email me or download my design & teaching philosophy and my curriculum vitae. design research »Digital Collecting: Thesis »Shareables: File Sharing »The Living Library »Divers' Language System »Visual Noise Experience »Patterns & Chickens »Book Design »Softwear: Digital Textile professional practice teaching experience The Living Library The purpose of this project was to explore local identity creation through a designed system. The intent was to create a communication and branded system for a specific community -- in this case avid used-book buyers -- that employs a hybridization of on- and off-line methods for connecting its members to each other. Physical Component The offline method involves customizable "tape" that the user wraps around the book's cover. The images on the tape are user specified but the aesthetic treatment is synonymous with this specific community. Overtime, the buildup of different tape offers bookstore browsers and readers with a visual record of the book's shared path. With popularity, the community's identity supersedes that of the book's. After a reader applies tape to a book and registers it in the Living Library, they can leave the book for another reader to discover, mark, and return back to the system. Digital Component Bridging both digital and physical worlds, the Online Footnote Companion lets readers interactively "write in the margins" by placing stickers on book pages that refer readers to the website where they can carry on a virtual dialog (via blogging) with future readers long after the book has left their own hands. The user-profiles of each new member accumulate online, acting as a digital metaphor for the book's evolving identity. The Living Library system includes book tape, footnote stickers, bookplates, informational bookmarks and website. All content (including design, writing and research) copyright Jamie E. Gray, 2007, unless otherwise attributed. Technical advisement provided by agrayspace creative.