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I grew up in Tehran and began my Graphic Design and Fine Arts practices in high school. I have an Eastern mind. To me, language, symbolic connections, and intuition hold something sacred. They have always been the answer to why I love abstracting my thoughts and then telling a story—or taking a story and visually abstracting it to tell a new one. Graphic design became my tool for giving language to my discoveries; it is my playground for encountering my creative pulses and mentioning my connection with my individuality and unique intuition.

This essay is an overview of my research findings in which I explored the anatomy of intuition and how it is translated to creativity in Graphic Design, emerging through experimental approaches or problem solving methods or speculative design. Recognizing Intuition is a sensitive part of the creative process, It can be fleeting in spaces, abstraction, perception, temporality, or randomness. It is never fully deliberate or entirely accidental; rather, it is a liminal space that suddenly shifts to a tangible figure of thoughts, visions, sounds, and action and it operates in the in-between—the gaps. My current practice examines how intuition manifests in graphic design, how it materializes in design, and how it translates into visual language.

The original spark for this investigation holds highly personal ideas that I kept exploring as a creative person in pursuit of an exceptional expression of their vision. What made this a valuable research point for me is that intuition is represented differently for everyone and It relies on someone’s personal experience in life and symbolic systems in the nature they have built their layers of existence on.

In Eastern philosophy intuition is a holy approach and it becomes a fountain of inspiration for the artist where everything is a symbol conveying an immediate manifestation of an idea. This symbolic system is ambiguous and dynamic.

When you approach a process intuitively, creativity becomes a tripable dimension, a divergent quality fruitful to the process. I analyzed this phenomenon in different sources in order to identify its underlying nature when it comes to ideation process, graphic systems, and typographic expression. I also explored the approach in various projects which are included to support these four principles:

Intuition as an Emergent Process
Intuition as an iterative process tool
Intuition as a Symbolic Mapping
Intuition as Conceptual Layering

Inter—Views

[ Ellen Lupton ]
[ David Knowles ]
[ Tammy Dayton ]
[ Pouya Ahmadi ]

Inter—Sight

©2025 Ghazaleh Farrokhi

Produced in Graduate Graphic Design II (CFA AR 884) under the guidance of faculty advisors Kristen Coogan, Associate Professor of Art, and Christopher Sleboda, Associate Professor of Art, with additional assistance provided by Graham Atherton, Visiting Critic.

School of Visual Arts
College of Fine Arts
Boston University
May 2025

Resources

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167-181. https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/ept036

Harland, R. (2011). The Dimensions of Graphic Design and Its Spheres of Influence.

Design Issues, 27(1), 21-34. https://doi.org/10.1162/DESIa_00054

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3541.2006.11650084

Hasenhutl, G. (2020). Manual Drawing in Transforma-tion: A Brief Assessment of "Design-by-Drawing" and Potentials of a Body Technique in Times of Digitalization. The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 54(2), 56-74. https://doi.org/10.5406/jaesteduc.54.2.0056

Nemeth, C. (2003). Get real: The need for effective design research. Visible Language, 37(1), 93-.

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Pratt, R. (2011). How Perception Works and its Role in Creating Engaging Design. Design Principles & Practices, 5(5), 511-

520. https://doi.org/10.18848/1833-1874/CGP/v0505/38181

BUCKLEY, C. (2011). Graphic Constructions: The Experimental Typography of Edward Wright. In October (Vol. 136, Number 136, pp. 156-181). MIT Press.

https://doi.org/10.1162/OCTO_a_00046

Hardman, T. J. (2021). Understanding creative intuition.

Journal of Creativity, 31, 100006-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yjoc.2021.100006

Inter - Sight

Policastro, E. (1995). Creative Intuition: An Integrative

Review. Creativity Research Journal, 8(2), 99-113. https://doi.org/10.1207/

515326934crj0802_1

Ings, W. (2011). Managing Heuristics as a Method of Inquiry in Autobiographical Graphic Design Theses. The International Journal of Art d Design Education, 30(2), 226-241. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1476-8070.2011.01699.x

Li, D., & Westland, S. (2023). Beyond Intuition: An Empirical Study of Typeface Selection in a Bilingual Context. Information Design Journal: IDJ, 28(1), 7-32. https://doi.org/10.1075/idj.22018.li

Taffe, S. (2017). Who's in charge? End-users challenge graphic designers' intuition through visual verbal co-design. The Design Journal, 20, S390-S400. https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2017.1352916

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ic Alchemy. Philosophy (London), 56(215), 89-99. https://doi.org/10.1017/

S0031819100049809

Mohanty, J. N. (1980). The Concept of Intuition in Aes-thetics: Apropos a Critique by Adorno. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 39(1), 39- https://doi.org/10.2307/429917

Perkins, D. N. (1977). The Limits of Intuition. Leonardo (Oxford), 10(2), 119-125. https://doi.org/10.2307/1573688

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de Rooij, A., Dekker, E., Slegers, K., & Biskjaer, M. M.

(2021). How graphic designers rely on intuition as an ephemeral facility to support their creative design process. International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation, 9(4), 252-268. https://doi.org/10.10

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43(2), 105-128. https://doi.org/10.1177/02762366231173608

Taxonomy

Inter - Sight is a term I coined to describe a phase of perception that emerges through the creative process — one that envisions rapid insights whose emergence runs parallel to structured development.

The interpenetration of this thought process may seem distracting; however, it actually deepens the concept and adds an authentic layer to our interpretation by making the process more divergent — but only if we choose not to exclude it.

Accountability of Fantasies

Accountability of Fantasies is a speculative design research project that explores how fleeting unrealized ideas often dismissed as

distractions hold hidden potential and latent order. This work. considers daydreams, deferred thoughts, and intuitive sparks not as byproducts of disorder, but as fragments of a larger, complex system that quietly organizes itself over time.

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Ligatures

The space between two letters can be understood in many ways. If we think of it as time, the first letter exists as both past and present, while each following letter becomes present before shifting into the future. This space is not merely a gap but an interval of becoming — a moment where meaning has not yet solidified.

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Mnemo

Mnemo is a speculative branding project that envisions a futuristic company that preserves its customers’ memories in digital storage. The initial spark for this project was mnemonic phrases used in cryptographic security. Mnemo reimagines memory as a tangible asset, offering a seamless integration of nostalgia and technology. The branding relies on typography in its conventional format, as well as an experimental design of the letter “E,” which bridges the two syllables of the word Mnemo. This project culminates in a brand identity, speculative packaging, and a promotional video.

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A Block of the Aura

This project is a harmony of the artistic expression and the technical visualization of similar data inspired by my personal music playlists. A large poster and nine small risographs are the outcomes and I wanted those to speak their own visual language while conveying a sense of cohesion. The data is translated in two different formats to fulfill that purpose. The large poster 52" 34" is the data itself and the nine 11" 17" Risographs are representations of my figurative expressions while listening to those playlists, dedicated a room visualization that encapsulates the gestural movements. By transforming this data into visuals, my aim is to deepen our understanding of the profound relationship between music, emotions, and the spaces we inhabit.

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Fracture

Fracture is an experimental design project that explores the visual and conceptual manifestations of breakage, fragmentation, and reconstruction. Conducted as an interactive study at a book fair, the project began with a survey inviting participants to depict their interpretation of fracture-whether physical, emotional, or abstract.

These responses were then translated into a series of conditioned poster designs, each shaped by the individual perspectives collected.

Fracture is extended from my collaboration with Jason Dong.

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Bound Survey

Bound Survey is a book of books. In this publication, duality serves as both structure and story, reflecting the layered experience of reading a book as both object and subject. My approach bridges two modes of engagement: the analytical and the experiential.

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Liminality

Rooted in the anthropological concept of liminality- a state of transition, ambiguity, and suspended identity, this project emerged from a desire to interrogate and materialize that in-between space through typographic expression.

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Beyond The Seas

I decided to end my thesis book with a poem, as poems are often born from intuition and have the power to awaken that same intuition in the reader.

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I N T E R — I N T R O

Intuition as an Emergent Process Intuition as an iterative process tool Intuition as a Symbolic Mapping Intuition as Conceptual Layering

[ Ellen Lupton ] [ David Knowles ] [ Tammy Dayton ] [ Pouya Ahmadi ]