College of Design students showcase their projects with a popular media series called “NC State Creatives.”
NC State Creatives is an online series used to showcase students in the College of Design and the projects they are currently working on. Harish Palani, a graduate student at the School of Architecture, and Molly Nunes, a second-year graduate student in the graphic design master’s program, have both been featured for their design projects on YouTube, Instagram and the NC State website.
Max Cohen, digital content and social media specialist for the College of Design, takes the lead on the showcase by sharing these students’ work on social media. Nunes said Cohen approached her to see if she’d be interested in being featured for NC State Creatives.
“Max reached out to me and basically was wondering if I wanted to showcase any work that I’ve done during the program and sort of talk about my experience and my interests and passions that relate to my design work,” Nunes said. “Then we created [a] little clip video on Instagram, which is really cool, [and I] started talking about my interests in athletic design and things like that.”
Nunes said her goal is to encourage and support women in sports through her design work, as she grew up as a student-athlete.
“What I’m focusing on is sports technology and opportunities design [that] can help athletes, so more specifically, I’m looking at sports-related injuries and how augmented reality can help assist student-athletes within their recovery process, both physically and mentally through artificial intelligence and visual overlays of their personal body,” Nunes said.
Nunes’ design project is part of a thesis assignment that began mid-semester fall 2021. She was assigned a committee that consisted of a chair, reader and reviewer. She met weekly with the chair to discuss the design project. Nunes said she spends her time working on this project in various places throughout campus with the hope of gaining more motivation and inspiration.
“I actually do a lot of work in the grad studio in [Brooks] Hall, and I also go to the gym and do a lot of work there just because my project has to do a lot with fitness and sort of physical health,” Nunes said. “Being in that environment helps me sort of be inspired into my work.”
Palani’s project utilizes his skills in design to reduce plastic waste by repurposing it into art. According to the NC State College of Design website, Palani “sees architects and engineers as having an opportunity to repurpose plastic waste to create new materials for construction purposes.”
Palani first collects plastic waste from different sources on campus, cleans it out and then sorts it based on the different types of plastics.
“They are shredded using a shredding machine [and] the plastic gets its shape based on the shape of the mold,” Palani said. “I fabricated the molds at the materials lab to make sheet and tube-shaped plastics. So far I have used recycled plastics to make tables, chairs and lighting fixtures.”
Nunes believes that, with the pandemic, it is more important now than ever to showcase design students’ work online, especially for people who do most of their work virtually this year.
“The creative project that Max is working on I think just creates a community that you may not have access to because of COVID and schedules and things like that,” Nunes said. “I think it’s a great way to inspire one another.”
Watch their featured videos on Youtube to learn more about Palani and Nunes’ projects. You can find more NC State Creatives projects on the College of Design website.
