Ben Evjen
Ben Evjen is a Professor of Practice in Graphic Design at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. His creative work explores the paradigm of growing up with an epileptic mother in his youth. The Allay Series has been awarded top honors through AIGA Salt Lake City (2017 & 2018) and Design Arts Utah (2018). These characters have been presented at conferences including: UCDA, Design Incubation and the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities. Evjen’s additional creative wanderings have been exhibited internationally in Qatar, Iceland, Germany, South Korea, and Poland.
Allay Series Iterations
These characters were created to ease the anxiety children experience when their epileptic loved one has a seizure.Timers within each figure delineate the duration of two phases of an epileptic episode: the seizure itself and automatisms. By turning the character’s head (signifier of seizure) and legs (signifier of automatisms) simultaneously, the child has a visual gauge for how long the seizure should last.
These figures are arranged from left to right in the order of their creation.
Early models were dedicated to form and function. In later iterations, square figures were developed to communicate the perceived distortion of a loved one experiencing a seizure. As the timer winds down the figure realigns, signifying a return to normalcy.
