Smash, Don't Pass
A piece of interactive typography installed on the ground that turns the everyday act of killing invasive spotted lanternflies into an opportunity for play.
Timeline
Skills
Team
2 weeks, September 2023
Experience Design, Typography, Placemaking
Yoo Sung Lee
Type Installation
To inspire action, we installed the type directly on the ground, so people would see lanternflies to kill as they looked down to read it. We needed a material that was available in many colors, waterproof, durable enough to be walked on, and cheap, and after some material testing, found it in duct tape.
Accompanying Poster
To provide context to the uninitiated, we created posters. The QR code links to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s webpage on lanternflies, so people could learn more about why they were being asked to kill them.
Process
Spotted lanternflies are an invasive species to Pennsylvania. Because of the damage they do to agriculture, the state government encourages people to kill them when they see them, making smashing flies a regular habit for students on campus.
So, we selected a courtyard on campus with an abundant population of lanternflies and brainstormed a type installation that could gamify the action of killing flies, turning an everyday action into an opportunity for play and educating students new to the Pittsburgh area about lanternfly protocol in a fun and memorable way.
For text, we went with “Smash, Don’t Pass” because it was succinct, punchy, and had a strong call to action, while leveraging the humor of the euphemism to be memorable and inspire playful interaction.
Finally, keeping in mind the blocky visual style duct tape affords, we selected a typeface and an illustration style that was reminiscent of old arcade games such as Space Invaders to further nudge the experience towards a game.
Initial sketches of different spaces, phrases, and formats we considered.
An early test featuring real dead lanternflies sandwiched between sheets of tracing paper. We decided it was probably too gross to keep pursuing, as it might give people a reason to avoid the type.
Refined sketches playing with typeface and color, once we'd decided our type direction.
We constructed the duct tape letters on our desks, then transferred them outside.
Takeaways
This project proved a rewarding exercise in placemaking. Once we’d installed the type, we noticed fellow students discussing the courtyard as a space—“the lanternfly area”—rather than just a threshold. In fact, students liked the space so much that we ultimately left the installation up for six weeks longer than planned, giving us a proper durability trial and prompting us to spontaneously figure out a maintenance strategy.
The installation was also a good opportunity to continue iteratively adapting the installation in response to real-time user feedback. As we installed the type, we noticed people going out of their way to not step on it. So, we created additional signage indicating it was okay to walk on the type and tested out various placements for the signage until user interaction was seamless.