The George Brown School of Design returned with their Year End Show (YES!) from May. 3 to 5 after a three-year gap.  

Over the course of the event, students showcased their final projects and attended workshops and panel discussions at the Waterfront Daniel’s building. 

Graduating students from various programs presented their final projects as exhibits at YES! alongside other students.  

Ana Rita Morais, chair of the school of design said, “There’s about 450 graduates graduating from across 12 programs at the School of Design and we’re celebrating all of them.”  

Students of the interaction design program put up various exhibits for people to experience using technology such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and motion capture sensors. The theme for the interaction design exhibition was to imagine a city that caters to people’s experiences and needs. 

 “We’re trying them to think about what are the kind of different socio-political economic issues that drive the systems that build cities… to think beyond the physical realm of the city,” said Christopher Pandolfi, a faculty member of the interaction design program. 

He added that the idea is to make the audience understand that interaction design is about the experiences people have instead of buildings or tangible things.  

Students began working last fall to develop a prototype and worked over the two semesters to have their final projects showcased at the YES! exhibition. 

‘Loo’ was one of the exhibits presented by a group of graduating students. 

“We touched upon the lack of public washrooms in Toronto and bring that to people’s awareness so they can decide what to do with it next. You will be able to immerse yourself in a VR experience of a certain possible and potential future of public washrooms and kind of go step by step of our vision of what it could be,” said Jodie Chow, a team member for Loo. 

Another team member Yongjae Yoon shared that Loo also proposes the use of personal health information retrieved from urine samples as a marketing tool to finance the public washrooms. 

A team of second year students presented their exhibit titled ‘Breaking Barriers’ the vision of which brings to light to challenges faced by marginalized communities, the exhibit was a physical representation of our society and visitors were challenged to knock down the walls. 

“Then afterwards, we have these glasses, which we call solidarity lenses, you put on the solidarity lenses, and we show you images from famous speeches and songs that we generated to give you an idea of what a world without barriers could look like,” said Yefri Ventura, team member of Breaking Barriers. 

Other exhibits included connecting with family members through virtual reality and the use of augmented reality to picture a city. 

The graphic design students showcased their design projects during the YES! as well. Their exhibits ranged from journal notebooks and illustrated picture books to ideas for pet shops.  

Olga Sushchenko, a student from Ukraine, used her project to express gratitude to Canada for its help towards Ukraine in the ongoing war.  

“I was born and raised in Ukraine and moved five years ago to Toronto. This project is about Canada-Ukraine relationship. I decided to go with the concept of traditional Ukrainian patterns that we use in embroidery and combined famous Canadian symbols like maple leaf and pine trees,” she said.  

Apart from the exhibition, students attended the two panel discussions on topics of mental health and alumni journeys, and the workshops on experimental typography and collage were held as well.  

Industry partners were invited to attend the exhibit on day two to give students an opportunity to network and present their exhibits. On the final day, an award ceremony was held. 

“You can really see the hard work and dedication that they put into it. It has been really difficult coming back to campus, obviously, after all the remote learning, and so you can really see the perseverance and the hard work of the students,” said Morais.