Cheese Board Collective is a local shop in Berkeley, which offers a wide variety of cheese. I also love their freshly baked breads and pizza. They are very popular in the Bay Area but they don’t have a good identity. So I thought why not create an identity for them by myself and make the brand have a stronger, clearer, and more memorable look. I also wanted to bring more fun and unique features to the products. By using illustration and typography in black and white, I wanted to simplify the brand and make it unique.

This project was to pick a director and plan a film festival based on a common thread in his films. I chose a Japanese film director Shunji Iwai who is known for his distinctive and innovative visual style. Based on his unique perspective towards the age of youth, I came up with the title “Embrace the rain” to represent the reflections of bittersweet memories in most of his films. Inspired by his style of “pure”, I kept minimal design in my head and developed an exclusive pack which includes a series of products relate to the word of “memory”. Components like diary, soundtrack in a bottle of sand, origami paper and stationary system give people an idea of the mood when they receive this exclusive pack. The festival will take place in Japantown located in San Francisco, where a lot of foreigners go to embrace Japanese culture.

As a designer, we tend to create beautiful stuff to put on the shelf, but that is not the only reason I’m doing design. I always think of the second-life for my creations. I believe a graphic designer can reimagine the end of a package’s life. Isn’t this ability powerful? Because packaging should be easy for people to see whether it is for indoor or outdoor usage, I asked myself what’s indoor and outdoor looked like. In the end, I decided to use simple illustrations of indoor/outdoor products to differentiated them. I used fresh color to visually attract people. The packages are made from recyclable paper stock and can be reused after disposal.

I use OXO products a lot. They are easy to use and look nice. However, it seems everyone sees OXO only as a company which sells smart cookwares and few people know their core concept is based on Universal Design. It is meant to produce buildings, products and environments that are inherently accessible to older people, people without disabilities, and people with disabilities. I wanted to address this for the new identity and expand the brand into the field of advanced technology in order to ease daily tasks for everyone of us.

This assignment was to pick a song and express it in the form of a poster by using typography and images. Music is a language and everyone translates it  in different ways. Some may laugh, some may cry. Sometimes beautiful melodies can tell terrible things, while sad songs can be cheerful. We were encouraged to explore different photography techniques by using various materials, shapes, objects and colors. I choose the song Lust sung by a famous Danish indie rock band The Raveonettes. The song itself is slightly dark, but from my understanding it is talking about an insane love and there is still some hope. Photography can be very personal in the way one shoots a single image. I am taking this chance to express my true feelings about this song through images. By using a projector and combining photos, I wanted to express the idea of hope in the dark.

This assignment was to design a book based on a theme and it can be interpreted in any way. I decided to do spice because cooking is my hobby. There is a saying that ‘a recipe has no soul, you as a cook must bring soul to it’. Cooking is like art; I use spice to make it colorful. After the theme had been decided, I shopped around for different kinds of spice. From Mexican to Indian, from sweet to extremely spicy, I started to explore the world of spice. Every meal used different kinds of spices. I enjoyed the process of taking photos of food in an organized way in order to make them feel appetizing.

GoldieBlox creates awesome toys, games and entertainment for girls, designed to develop early interest in engineering and confidence in problem-solving. (https://www.goldieblox.com/)

During my three month long internship with GoldieBlox, I truly learned a lot not only for my design skills but also the idea of changing.

I highly admire the CEO's philosophy behind the product which is to help kids finding their interest in engineering by playing GoldieBlox toys. The whole idea before she started the business is inspiring for me.

My role was to assist other designers to create packaging design for several products including the Craftstruction box and Mini pets packaging. I also designed a brand book for GoldieBlox which include all the branding information, logo structures, color palette and photo style etc...

These days many parents are worried about their latchkey kids. I want to reduce the parental anxiety of leaving children at home and motivate latchkey kids to be involved in basic household management activities. I took this idea and developed it into a smart phone app. This reward-based app is user-friendly for both kids and parents. By setting customized tasks, parents can watch how their kids are doing when they are away from home. I believe this app will make stronger connection between parents and children. The app also comes with a wireless home control system and kids can notify parents if there’s an issue in the house.