Award-winning exhibition demonstrates how brands can make abstract values perceivable through sensory design.
Two people listening to the same symphony experience entirely different emotional landscapes. Michelle Poon recognized this paradox and built an entire conceptual exhibition around exploring musical perception through visual and tactile means. Muse, which earned a Golden A' Design Award in Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design, features three installation experiences using thermo-active fabric, acrylic tiles, and spatial design to translate what cannot be spoken into what can be touched and seen. Poon's research revealed something fascinating: when participants created doodles while surrounded by choral performers, they consistently focused on contrasts, patterns, and repetitive elements. Brands face identical challenges daily. Trust, innovation, warmth, sophistication. These qualities resist articulation yet determine whether audiences connect or merely acknowledge.
The three installations within Muse demonstrate distinct communication strategies applicable to enterprise touchpoints. Thermo-active fabric responds to body heat, creating visual transformations based on touch. Visitors literally see their impact on the environment without explanation or interpretation required. For brands seeking to communicate responsiveness or transformation, material choices in products, packaging, or retail environments can serve as powerful non-verbal communicators. The acrylic tile installation enables visitors to manipulate elements and explore relationships between sound representation and visual outcomes. Interactive translation parallels product configurators, co-creation platforms, and any touchpoint where audiences invest their own choices into constructing meaning. Poon's methodology, four months of perception research followed by five months of execution, suggests that understanding how audiences construct meaning enables more effective sensory communication design.
Every brand possesses intangible qualities that language captures imperfectly. Muse demonstrates that audiences can perceive values directly through sensory experience rather than interpret messages analytically. What qualities does your organization struggle to communicate through traditional channels, and how might material, spatial, or interactive approaches enable those qualities to become experienceable rather than merely describable?
