Tender is the Wild – Animated Illustration as a communication method: An approach to visualizing complex scientific content in e-papers

Tender is the Wild – Animierte Illustration als Kommunikationsmethode: Ein Ansatz zur Visualisierung komplexer wissenschaftlicher Inhalte im E-Paper

Name(s) of graduate(s):

Ayana Welskopf

2026

Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen

Kommunikationsdesign

Bachelor of Arts

Description

Tender is the Wild is an artistic-scientific bachelor’s project that deals with the question of how the inner life of animals can be perceived and represented. The starting point is a scientific text arguing that many animals possess complex cognitive and emotional abilities that have long been underestimated or excluded in research.

The project moves at the interface of illustration, animation, and scientific communication. At the same time, it reflects the limits of human knowledge and raises the question of how much of the inner life of other living beings is visible or representable at all. For this purpose, a 23-page e-paper was designed, which uses animated illustrations to interpret the text and shed light on it from an artistic perspective.