Tim Hagan

Spilled Ink

Designing creative, autobiographical podcasts as a means of generating dialogue about mental health and addiction

Tim Hagan is a multidisciplinary designer, art director and writer. His research explores the potentials of an autobiographical, multi-episodic, podcast design.
 

Spilled Ink is a practice-led, artistic inquiry that considers a period in his life where he experienced a battle with depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and addiction. The study seeks to design a narrative that traverses a range of media including written autobiographical text, animated film, photography, and podcasts.

Employing a heuristic inquiry, the practice is designed within a multi-media website, where young people can access a richly realised, autobiographical narrative that is embedded within a support network of agencies.

Hagan’s personal experience of mental health conditions and addiction has given him invaluable insight into how they affect an individual in day-to-day life. His hope is that, by artistically talking about his own experiences, honestly and openly, he may be able to create an environment where young people looking for accessible discourses can interact with a site that speaks with them in written, aural and visual language that they understand.

The project approaches mental health and addiction issues in a positive way through a carefully designed ‘insider experience’ that may provide a platform for empathy, information and networking support for young people.

Centre for Design Research
Te Kura Toi a Hoahoa
School of Art and Design

Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau,
Auckland University of Technology

Contact:

Susan Hedges susan.hedges@aut.ac.nz
Mandy Smith mandy.smith@aut.ac.nz

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to publish images or illustrations with their papers in CDR; neither editors nor publishers of CDR accept responsibility for any author’s/authors’ failure to do so.

© Centre for Design Research, AUT University 2021