My Micro-Museum of Matchboxes

As part of my BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts course at London College of Communication, we were given a brief to bring in 9 matchboxes for our first lesson, containing objects that best illustrate who we are.

​Upon getting the brief to use matchboxes, I was immediately reminded of a photo I had taken at the Beitou Hot Spring Museum in Taiwan back in early 2019. Matchbox covers were used for advertising back in the 1970s, so the designs were of restaurants, hotels and public hot spring bathhouses in Beitou.

I mainly focused on the visuals of the matchbox covers, taking inspiration from the colour schemes and style of the Taiwanese matchbox designs I had seen, and then recreating them in my own way. In terms of the objects that are represented on the cover designs, I chose objects, spaces and subjects that I associate myself with straight away, and didn’t think too much about it. These are things that I identify with instantly.