Psyche Inspired: Addison Mayhew

Person smiling with short hair, wearing metallic top and star-shaped eyeliner

Institution: Rochester Institute of Technology
Major: New Media Design
Psyche Inspired Class: 2025-2026

Reflections on Psyche Inspired

Reflections on Project 1: Onward to Psyche

A vector poster with flat shapes and grain texture shows NASA’s Psyche spacecraft flying over Mars’s Valles Marineris. Tall canyon walls in reds, oranges, and yellows fill the scene with blocky shadows. Above is a starry blue sky. White text reads “Onward to Psyche” at the top and “Valles Marineris” at the bottom, with “Mars Flyby 2026,” “NASA Psyche Mission,” and the Psyche Inspired logo below.

Onward to Psyche

Addison Mayhew

December 12th, 2025
Major: New Media Design
Genre/Medium: Vector Drawing in Figma
About the work:

Inspired by the iconic WPA National Parks posters that circulated throughout the United States during the 1930s and 1940s, this poster “Onward to Psyche” aims to celebrate the future of space exploration while acknowledging the visual language of our past. The original WPA series was designed to make America’s national parks feel accessible, exciting, and worth protecting. By borrowing that artistic heritage, this work places Mars—specifically Valles Marineris—into the lineage of landscapes once reserved for Earth. The canyon system on Mars is visually reminiscent of formations like Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon, making it a fitting site for a retro-futurist invitation.

The poster commemorates the NASA Psyche mission and the forecasted Mars flyby in May 2026. The Psyche spacecraft appears at the center of the composition: crisp, geometric, and unmistakably technological, contrasting with the soft, stratified shapes of the canyon below. Although the canyon contains the brightest colors in the piece, the spacecraft remains the visual focal point, flying overhead. This reinforces the idea that space is not distant or cold, but familiar and reachable—another place we might someday explore more freely. Read more…

Gallery View: Onward to Psyche

Reflections on Project 2: Design for Discovery

A digital illustration in a blueprint style shows the Psyche spacecraft orbiting the Psyche asteroid, drawn as a large, irregular shape. Thin white vector lines appear on a dark blue background, forming circular orbital paths, measurement marks, labels, and technical diagrams. Earth appears nearby as a small labeled sphere.

A Design for Discovery

Addison Mayhew

February 6th, 2026
Major: New Media Design
Genre/Medium: Vector Illustration in Adobe Illustrator
About the work:

“A Design for Discovery” is a digital vector illustration inspired by the Psyche mission and humanity’s enduring pursuit of knowledge. Rendered in a blueprint-based visual language, the piece frames space exploration not as distant science fiction, but as the result of deliberate human ingenuity, courage, and care. At its core, the work asks the viewer to consider how far intention and curiosity can carry us—and how something once thought unreachable can become tangible through planning, collaboration, and belief.

The blueprint aesthetic is central to the meaning of the piece. Blueprints represent the unseen labor behind discovery: the calculations, revisions, failures, and quiet moments of problem-solving that precede every monumental achievement. By presenting Psyche—a metal-rich asteroid believed to be the exposed core of a planetesimal—as a drafted, measured object, the illustration emphasizes that exploration is not accidental; it is engineered. Every line, label, and orbit is a testament to human persistence and our desire to understand the ancient structures that shaped our solar system. Read more…

Gallery View: A Design for Discovery

Reflections on Project 3: Specimen (16 Psyche)

A circular, low-relief sculpture sits on a black cardboard base. Crumpled silver and copper foils form torn ridges and sharp edges. Steel wool and chicken wire create tangled cavities. Gravel and sand are embedded throughout. Charcoal darkens recessed areas, and mirror fragments catch light within fractured metallic layers.

Specimen (16 Psyche)

Addison Mayhew

Major: New Media Design

Genre/Medium: Abstract Sculpture (cardboard, aluminum foil, steel wool, chicken wire, copper leaf, silver leaf, black acrylic paint, rocks, gravel, sand, mirror/glass shards)

About the Work:

Specimen (16 Psyche) is an abstract, materially driven exploration of the asteroid 16 Psyche. While the work visually represents the asteroid, it does so without spectacle or polish. At first glance, it may resemble a compressed pile of industrial debris—foil, wire, grit, and fractured surfaces. This ambiguity is intentional.

Psyche exists millions of miles away, known only through remote sensing and evolving scientific hypothesis. Current research suggests it is not a solid metal core as once believed, but a porous composite body composed of iron-nickel metal, silicate rock, and carbonaceous material. Rather than illustrating these findings, I translated them into physical behavior at a human scale. Read more…

Gallery View: Specimen (16 Psyche)

Reflections on Project 4: Sixteen for Psyche

A poetry book about a spacecraft traveling to a metal asteroid. Section illustrations include a rocket launching upward, a small spacecraft moving through star-filled space, and a dark asteroid with a bright glowing center. The visuals are detailed and atmospheric, supporting poems about science and human effort.

Sixteen for Psyche

Addison Mayhew

Major: New Media Design

Genre/Medium: Poetry, Collection assembled in Adobe InDesign, art made in Procreate

About the Work:

Sixteen for Psyche is a poetry collection structured around the phases of NASA’s Psyche mission, tracing a progression from engineering design to interplanetary travel to orbital encounter. The work draws from the language of systems engineering, trajectory analysis, and mission operations, using procedural and technical vocabulary as both structure and subject.

The collection is divided into three sections—Constraint, Persistence, and Exposure—each reflecting a phase of the mission and a corresponding shift in poetic form. In Constraint, highly structured poems mirror the rigor of design reviews, testing, and launch preparation. In Persistence, the work transitions into free verse, reflecting the long-duration continuity of spaceflight, where motion is gradual and cumulative. In Exposure, the poems become increasingly experimental, destabilizing form and language as the spacecraft reaches Psyche, a metallic asteroid believed to be the exposed core of a protoplanet. Read more…

Read all Poems

Gallery View: Sixteen for Psyche

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