Finding Our Perspective: The Story Behind Parallax
Because the truth rarely shows up from just one angle
Here’s a quick experiment.
Close one eye and hold your finger in line with something across the room—a doorframe, a light switch…anything. Now keep your finger still and switch eyes.
Suddenly, it’s not lined up anymore.
You didn’t move your finger. The object didn’t move either. But from a different angle, the relationship between them changes.
That effect is called parallax; when an object appears to shift position depending on the perspective you’re viewing it from.
Astronomers once used this phenomenon to measure the distance between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun. By observing the same object from different vantage points, they could calculate what wasn’t immediately visible from just one point of view.
That idea is exactly how our team found its name. But the story behind Parallax didn’t start there.
Left to Right – Team Parallax: Arabella Cosgrove, Kaiya Lynch, Keira Lasley, Matthew Gerber, Jojo O, Hanna Thompson, Sydney Brown, Meghan Aslin, Bishop Lamm, Carrie Sandler, Lainey Hogg
Learning about ourselves first
At the beginning of the semester, our team was tasked with answering the question “what is true knowledge?” But before deciding that, we first had to truly know ourselves.
So we created a survey to learn more about our team.
What we discovered surprised us. Despite our different backgrounds and specialties, we shared a lot in common; especially our aesthetic tastes and the way we think about storytelling.
Nearly everyone described themselves as a storyteller in some way.
It felt a little like assembling a constellation. Different points of light forming one shape.
Choosing a name
Our team name was chosen partly because of the science behind it; partly because of the way the word sounds. And partly because it captured something deeper about the work we’re doing.
“Public relations and advertising is all about finding ways to promote a new perspective or angle, and parallax represents that,” PR Account Manager Kaiya Lynch mentioned. “Perspective matters. The same story can look completely different depending on where you’re standing.”
Parallax felt like the perfect metaphor for that.
A shared philosophy
The name also reflects how our team thinks about knowledge itself.
After assigning research topics and beginning our work, we had several long conversations about what it actually means to “know” something.
“Our team agreed that true knowledge is most visible in someone’s ability to hold multiple perspectives at once,” Art Director Meghan Aslin said.
Parallax embodies that idea. It reminds us that understanding rarely comes from one viewpoint alone.
Left to Right – Art Directors: Meghan Aslin and Bishop Lamm
Building an identity
Naming ourselves was also about defining how we present our work to the world.
“Establishing our name and brand was a key step in defining our identity as a team, highlighting what makes us unique and shaping how we represent ourselves across social media,” Media Planner Hanna Thompson said.
For us, Parallax represents curiosity, perspective and the willingness to question what looks obvious at first glance.
“As we decided on our team name, we wanted it to embody who we are as a team. Inclusivity, transparency and genuine connection were all very important to us as a team when discussing our values,” Account Manager Sydney Brown said. “We are coming together with our many different perspectives to create something we are all truly passionate about.”
Left to Right – Account Manager Sydney Brown and Media Planner Hanna Thompson
Looking forward
That’s our origin story: a little science, a lot of discussion and a shared belief that perspective matters.
Which leaves us with the same question we started with:
Can true knowledge be found?
And if it can—how many perspectives does it take to truly know something?
Copywriter: Matthew Gerber