Portfolio
Journey Into Asia
Every year the UNC Asian American Students Association hosts the largest cultural showcase on campus called Journey Into Asia, which features 10 acts ranging from cultural dance, singing, spoken word, etc. As Design Chair for two years, I was in charge of designing promotional materials, such as flyers, T-shirts, and social media graphics.
2019 Journey Into Asia: disORIENT
Main Design
The 2019 theme the Cultural Chair chose was disORIENT. It derives from Edward Said's Orientalism, which pertains to the West's exoticization of the East. In order to portray the message, I worked with the another executive board member to come up with the vision of a golden dragon, a stereotypical Asian image, and disoriented it to be breaking up into geometric shapes. In the background, I included 27 different Asian translations of the word "disorient" to make the image more inclusive of the diversity within the Asian American community.
Animation Video
I created an animation video on Adobe After Effects that was played at the end of the showcase. The animation includes the original design's dragon but it breaks into the triangle shapes, disorienting the stereotypical Asian symbol. The different translations of the word "disorient" fall in the background and dissipate along with the dragon. The animation video ends with the original design's logo of "disorient" with the stereotypical calligraphy brush style typography and red sun symbol. This logo then glitches to slowly show "disorient" again but in a more modern typography.
T-Shirt Design
For the event, I also had the responsibility of designing the T-shirt. I took the main design and reformatted it so that it could appropriately fit the T-shirt. Over 150 shirts were sold.
Photo Project 1
I edited a photo project series to highlight different narratives from within the Asian American community at UNC. Each photo aims to combat a stereotype through distorted images. The divide means to showcase a comparison between “What others perceive me as” vs. “Who I really am” and works to emphasize how our Asian heritage is not separate from our American identity but both sides together create the subject of the image.
Photo Project 2
For the 2018-2019 executive board, I worked with the Publicity Chair to design 16 new profile pictures to help promote the showcase. These are a few of them. For the design, I decided to express the concept of disorientation through abstract scribbles and shapes and wanted to maintain a cohesive theme. Each executive board member wrote a blurb about their own experiences as Asian Americans, relating to the theme.
2020 Journey Into Asia: As-1-anAmerican
Main Design
The theme for the 2020 Journey Into Asia was #As-1-anAmerican. #As-1-anAmerican aims to address the lack of mainstream representation of Asian-Americans in various fields and spark increased discourse on inclusion and diversity, as well as provide a platform for the Asian American community to portray themselves in their authentic form. As Asian Americans are starting to gain more representation now, we acknowledge how only specific narratives within the Asian American community are being highlighted, left out, and why/how.
T-Shirt Design
For the event, I also had the responsibility of designing the T-shirt. I took the main design and reformatted it so that it could appropriately fit the T-shirt. Over 100 shirts were sold.
Photo Project
For the 2019-2020 executive board, I worked with the Publicity Chair again to design 15 new profile pictures to help promote the showcase. These are a few of them. For this edit, I decided to keep the main design of the theme, lower the opacity, and place it in the background of the subjects in order to keep a cohesive theme. Like last year, each executive board member wrote a blurb about their own experiences as Asian Americans, relating to the theme.