Visual Communication

Dan Kinlay

I am an Irish multidisciplinary designer who enjoys working in Print, 3D, Video and Audio. I am especially drawn to experimental approaches and abstract work. I highly value a close attention to detail in the design process. My interest in mathematics and music play a key role in my design approach and I find that conceptual borrowing from these areas often leads to exciting results. I am passionate about 3D design for animation and 3D printing. I enjoy working across a range of different projects from small, printed designs all the way to large brand identity designs with multiple outcomes. Outside of design, I spend my spare time racing sailboats, practicing photography, or working on other creative projects. 

/ Portfolio website

Absence of Reality

This project discusses 3D animation as a visual medium and its effect on the human psyche by highlighting the expanding grey area between realistic virtual environments and our reality. It uses the subject of an ice cube in a fridge as a metaphor for these virtual environments existing within the real world. As 3D animation becomes more common and appears more realistic, our ability to differentiate these images from reality decreases. 3D animation often depicts an object in an ideal and hyper-realised view, sometimes even embellishing the nature of the subject matter. How long will it be until you aren’t able to tell the difference? 

Entropy, Nature’s pendulum

This book is an enquiry into the force of entropy in our world, which transforms matter from order into chaos. The book uses the fractal geometry of nature to understand an otherwise intangible subject. It considers space and time as a 4-dimensional volume in which the branches of entropy are enacted, using slices through wood and the revealed pattern to represent this. It is informed by the writing of James Gleick, Benoit Mandelbrot, Hermann Minkowski and some others as well as some poetic descriptions of entropy and nature. This book was designed for the International Society of Typographic Designers Assessment 2025.