Adam Boin Graphic Design Thesis Portfolio Fall 2022

Elysian Gateway

Elysian Gateway is a multimedia Alternate Reality Game, or ARG. It tells the story of Alfons Micella, a scientist working for the company Elysian Gateway to develop a means to download and store memories past the point of death. During his research, he is diagnosed with a fatal disease, and told he doesn’t have long to live. He changes his work, and augments his design to upload his consciousness onto the internet, where he finds digital existence to be agony. The player of the game works to uncover this story, and put Alfons to rest. They do so by initially discovering Elysian Gateway through one of 2 posters in the real world. These posters lead them to the Elysian Gateway website, where they learn that Alfons is missing, and more about the company. They must find the password to the Archive page hidden in a video, where they will discover more information about what’s going on with this company. In the Archives, they must find the password for Alfons’s personal files to further the story. Once they do, they uncover the truth about Alfons’s work, a final message from him, and they dissolve his consciousness and complete the ARG. The project uses many forms of graphic design to tell the story: branding, website design, poster design, video production, experimental imagemaking, medical documents, and research reports. It combines technical design skills with storytelling to comment on escapism and avoidance, all while re-telling one of the oldest myths: a human’s attempt to cheat death.

22 albums

Fall 2022