Standard Practice
Office for Exceptions
Visual identity
Interaction design
Creative coding
Context
Senior thesis project, Parsons School of Design. In progress.
Tools
HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Role
Concept development, research, writing, visual identity, interaction design and web development.
Year
2026
Standard Practice examines who gets permission to experiment and what makes their work count. It takes the form of the Office for Exceptions, an authority that welcomes experimentation through an increasingly conditional application process. Applicants encounter permits, sponsors and requests for evidence of prior practice. The website turns institutional recognition into something visitors have to navigate, exposing how a system can reward compliance with its criteria while claiming to support work that challenges them.
Who gets to experiment?
This project grew out of my thesis research into play and the pressure to justify activities through their outcomes. I became interested in legitimacy: why some people’s experiments are recognized as meaningful practice while others are expected to explain themselves first. Standard Practice asks who sets those conditions and what happens when permission depends on already having been recognized.
An office with conditions
I built the project around the public-facing website of an institution. Its language is courteous, procedural and certain of its own authority. Visitors encounter the office through familiar structures: an introduction, an explanation of its purpose and an application. As they read, the offer of support becomes harder to separate from the conditions attached to it.
The permission loop
The application carries the central contradiction. Permission requires a sponsor and evidence of prior experimental practice, but those forms of recognition depend on access the applicant may not yet have. Each requirement points toward another condition. The visitor experiences the difficulty of finding a legitimate starting point within a system that assumes they already belong.
Making authority visible
Monospaced headings, dense forms and a rigid grid borrow from administrative documents and terminal interfaces. Inter keeps the longer instructions readable, while the accent color interrupts the controlled layout. Status labels and repeated terminology give the office a consistent vocabulary for judging an applicant. The identity makes its authority feel established before the visitor has had a chance to question it.
Beyond the website
The next stage extends the office into permits, stamps, letterheads and application forms. These objects would make its judgments tangible, carrying the same language and conditions into physical encounters. A permit could appear to resolve an application while introducing another obligation.
An institution worth questioning
The project is still developing. The central challenge is to make the offer immediately understandable while allowing its contradictions to emerge through participation. I want visitors to recognize the appeal of being approved, then notice what they have been asked to accept in exchange.
