freshman.zip

freshman.zip is a project that provides a screensaver and various digital packages designed to encourage university students.

In the past, screensaver programs were created to prevent phosphor burn caused by displaying the same image for a long time, such as burn-in. This project reinterprets the screensaver as a tool to help reduce burnout among today’s university students.

The screensaver borrows the format of creating supportive banner signs often experienced during middle and high school years. While making those banners involved cutting out and attaching letters one by one to express encouragement, we translated that sentiment into digital form by lettering entire phrases and turning them into animated screensavers. In addition, within digital environments where English is typically the default language, the project presents familiar and comforting Korean text to help ease the fatigue of exhausted students.

The screensavers consist of eight Korean lettering phrases combined with various motions and animations.

Using the screensavers, desktop wallpapers, folder icons, and user profile images included in the digital package, users can customize their computers however they like. In particular, the screensaver displays encouraging messages, allowing users to choose and apply the phrases they prefer. By decorating their computer environment amid busy and exhausting academic life, students can enjoy small moments of fun and relieve stress when they return from a short break to see supportive words appear on their monitor.

To match the characteristics of a screensaver, the website partially adopts the visual style of macOS and Windows, two representative graphical user interface operating systems.