This project has graciously been featured in an article by Radii China.

Although broken Chinese cuts my mouth like glass, the taste of home always heals the wounds.

For my degree project at the Rhode Island School of Design BFA Graphic Design, I focused on the practice of relearning and reclaiming my Chinese heritage as well as the narrative of the Asian-American experience. Specifically, I designed a project about food as a medium of cultural literacy (though we are far from our homelands, we draw closer to our cultural identities through cooking, eating, and sharing meals). The project is two-fold:

Part I: Cookbook
Part II: Comfort Food Quilt

Abstract

In Asian households, we don’t often say “I love you.” Instead, we say, “Have you eaten yet?” (你吃了吗?) This is a deceivingly simple and mundane question. But for us, it bears the weight of relationships, of family, of connection. This statement addresses not only the love for a person, but also a concern for their overall health and well-being. When we fight with our parents, we don’t necessarily apologize afterwards. My mom just says, “Dinner is ready; come downstairs.” And without being asked, my dad would bring me a bowl of cut-up fruit while I’m doing homework. Food is our language of love and care. Which begs the question, what are we eating? And why? To which my answers respectively are, the food of our ancestors, to nourish our cultural identities.

[This is the abridged abstract; full abstract available on Medium write-up]

Degree Project Trailer Video

I created this video as part of DP requirements at RISD; it sums up the narrative of my degree project and the process of its creation! And yes, that is me singing as a child.

Part I: The Cookbook

Of course, in any project pertaining to food, the most reasonable deliverable to create is a cookbook. Thus, I wanted to design an introductory cookbook dedicated to other Asian-Americans going through the same things I had experienced. For this book I chose 9 recipes starting from easy, and each more challenging than the previous.

CHINESE INGREDIENT GLOSSARY

Because this is an introduction to Chinese cuisine, I wanted to help the reader in identifying unfamiliar ingredients and be able to look for them in markets. It's also helpful in learning Chinese terms and applying them in real life! Each ingredient is accompanied by an illustration, name, Chinese translation and pinyin pronunciation, as well as a short description. Each recipe's list of ingredients has a few notated with a red circle, which refers to this glossary.

PART II: COMFORT FOOD QUILT

As a second component partnered with the cookbook, I decided to create a quilt that serves as a literal metaphor for the term "comfort food" and how it can keep you warm and make you feel safe.

DAY OF THESIS PRESENTATION

My day-of presentation was set up in the Graphic Design commons. I set up a cozy corner with rugs, a coffee table, and a TV to present my keynote. I printed and bound 4 copies of my cookbook, laid my quilt on a pedestal, and cooked 4 out of the 9 recipes detailed in my book. Lastly, I had a tablecloth printed with the recipe icons I designed.

Even more detail and process documentation of this project can be found in this Behance project I published! If you made it to the end, congratulations.

Pith Flower Shop is a collective founded by Irene Lin Wei that focuses on the preservation and education about the traditional art of Taiwanese hand-crafted pith paper flowers. Originally, artificial flowers were developed in Ancient China so that people could access flowers that were not locally grown, or restricted by the changing seasons. These flowers are made using a paper-like material called pith veneer (or in Chinese, tongcao 通草) handmade by one of the last remaining pith veneer makers in Taiwan.

I had the honor of designing the brand identity of Pith Flower Shop in order to help bring attention and awareness to this near-defunct craft. The challenge of this project was to create a brand that pays respects to an age-old artisanal craft but is simultaneously a refreshing modern take on the concept. In addition, the brand had to be comfortably bilingual due to its Taiwanese origin.

The primary logo mark was designed with an asian seal or stamp in mind. The circular shape depicts a wholeness and balance.

The central illustration is composed of the Tetrapanax Papyrifer, the leaf from which pith paper for flower-making is derived. The flower is a plum blossom, which is the national flower of Taiwan.

The typefaces chosen are sans-serifs with slight flourishes that give the words an elegant and decorative, yet polished look. The Chinese phrase says, “tong cao hua,” which is the term for these handmade flowers.

Photography is another central component to the brand. A secondary logo that is flat and typography-based is paired with photos in order to blend together more seamlessly. The circular seal logo is reserved for areas of application where the illustration and colors will not be a distraction.

[Photography is by Eden Tai, a RISD 2019 graduate. All flowers photographed were lovingly handcrafted by Irene Wei herself.]

Pith Flower Shop Official Website

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Designing at Airtable

In August of 2019 I started my first full-time job as a brand designer at Airtable in NYC! These are just a few snippets of projects I've worked on during my time here.

Airtableversary Cards

One of my first projects was to create new postcards to celebrate Airtable work anniversaries. These are 4 that I came up with which were printed shortly after.

Conference Room Backgrounds

I recently illustrated 5 out of 10 new backgrounds for brand new conference rooms with my coworker Ally Reeves!

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Being the First Brand Design Intern at Stripe

I was on the Brand & Communications team and worked on lots of consumer-facing brand assets as well as materials for internal company use. Working at Stripe was truly one of the most life-changing experiences I have had thus far.

Stripe Communities Rebrand

The first project I worked on was the rebrand of the Stripe Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to Stripe Communities! For this project I was assigned to design 2 of the 9 logos (and later jumped on a third). I worked on the East & Southeast Asians logo and the Rainbows (LGBTQ) logo.

East & Southeast Asians

For this logo I did tons of research into "asian" symbolism and imagery. A huge potential issue I wanted to avoid with this logo was making it too specific to one type of Asian or making it too stereotypical (a dragon, a yin-yang sign, things that are too generically east asian). My first few ideas were to approach the subject typographically, geographically, as an identity, or with food.

Then my epiphany hit. ESEA should be represented by an activity we all share: eating! Not just a graphical representation of food, but a symbol of community and eating together as a family or group. This is an important part of almost every asian culture, and I thought it best represented our entire community.

I initially had a sketch of two hands eating, but later added a third hand which spoke more to the community aspect. Each hand uses a different utensil (chopsticks and spoon are more east asian, and many southeast asians eat with their hands!).

This is the final version of the ESEA logo with color. The color really solidifies my concept of diversity and representation which I wanted to emphasize for this cultural community.

I was personally part of this ERG during my time at Stripe and actually was part of the organizing team that planned events and kept an agenda! Which basically means we ordered boba and Beard Papas for every meeting.

Rainbows

The Rainbows logo was much more straightforward and I came up with a few different graphic ideas.

After a few rounds of critique and consulting with the stakeholders (Rainbows lead members) I narrowed down to these two concepts!

This is the final version of the logo with color and scaled up and down in size!

Desi

I was also able to step in and help render the logo for the Desi ERG as well! The logo is a lotus flower and leaf which represents the national flower of India.

Stripe Communities Logo

After my partnered designer and I finished these logos, we created posters promoting the newly rebranded Stripe Communities. We even had a Stripe Communities fair event which I helped to plan and set up!

Project 2: Increment

Increment Research & Ideation

This project was special to me because Increment was one of the reasons that prompted me to apply to Stripe in the first place!

I was supposed to lay out an interview piece for the publication. I started by researching different interview layouts and various ways of organizing information. For example, I tried a few different information hierarchies using color and indentation, to name a few.

These are a few different early ideas and concepts I tried out by following the Increment grid and styleguide while exercising my own creative liberties.

Increment Final Version

Belgium Launch Poster

My most fun project was to create a country launch poster. I chose to design one for our Belgium product launch which happened back in 2017! These are some initial sketches I created during the research stage. For inspiration, I looked at different aspects of Belgium such as the national flower, colors, monuments, famous features, artists, and so forth.

My most intriguing idea was inspired by the crow-stepped gables of Belgium. They're basically recognizable buildings in Belgium that have roofs shaped like stairs!

My team suggested that I try a completely different approach and not get too committed to one style just yet, so I created a second version of the poster using a flat illustration style instead of isometric.

The design team liked both versions but ultimately, I decided to go with the first one! For the final version I cropped the view a bit and tweaked the colors. This is one of my most favorite things I've ever made to date!

Stripe is amazing!

The day I started my internship at Stripe, I had no idea what a tremendous journey I had ahead of myself both as a designer and as a human being. I have met some of the most insanely talented people at this company and this internship has been one of the most fulfilling and enriching experiences of my life!

Pictured is a small portion of the summer intern cohort! I love my Stripe family!

Stripe is challenging!

The design team at Stripe is indescribably diligent and talented. This internship was one of the most challenging things I have faced as a junior designer and I have learned an invaluable amount from this team of wonderful human beings.

We Haven't Won Yet!

Stripe taught me what it truly means to work smart and work hard. I had the best mentorship and guidance thanks to my wonderful mentor Tatiana Van Campenhout! Stripe truly is a special place to work and I hope to see myself in some capacity here again in the future. :)

Overview

This project was created for Mapping Information at RISD under the instruction of Doug Scott during Spring 2018. I created a small accordion book detailing the process of do-it-yourself Century Eggs, or Pidan in Chinese. We were instructed to choose any type of process (how orange juice is made, how airplanes are constructed, etc), and create a step-by-step visual showing the process using as few words as possible.

What are Century Eggs?

Century eggs are duck eggs that are fermented in a caustic mixture and left for several weeks. The yolk turns creamy and green, and the whites turn gelatinous and brown. They are certainly an acquired taste for those unfamiliar with this asian delicacy!

I chose to show the process of making century eggs. Using mostly pictorial and iconic language I showed this process. The brown paper choice signifies the color of the egg yolk, and the use of black circular shapes represents the eggs.

Pages

Ideally, this DIY guide would come inside a box with all the ingredients you need pre-packaged and measured out.

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The Lunchbox Museum is a museum featuring vintage metal lunchboxes in Columbus, Georgia. This project was created in response to an assignment in the course Designing with Color at RISD.

Overview

I started out by researching the museum itself, which is quite small. The inside is basically shelves on shelves of vintage lunchboxes of all shapes, colors, and featured characters!

Ideation

To start ideating about the brand and logo, I first generated a list of words relating to the concept of "lunchbox" in order to spark a good direction.

Next, I decided to try and set the name of the museum in a typeface that seemed to work, so I experimented with numerous typefaces (only a few shown below). I was drawn in particular to Piepie Regular, Variex OT, and Chuck, which were all downloaded from Adobe Typekit.

After that, I tried making simple graphic ideas for logos in a rapid and iterative manner, just to get everything out there, even if the ideas were crappy. As you can see, these are the ideas that failed spectacularly in the beginning of my process.

However, through this process I noticed that the modular type on the very right was interesting because it mimicked the idea of compartmentalization evident in a lunchbox as it relates to the concept of storage and packing.

I played with some more fleshed out concepts inspired by modularity and variety, since you can put so many things into a lunchbox in so many different ways. The left-most idea was created based on this thought, so it plays on abstract shapes to represent this variety. The middle was interesting to me because it was so playful, which is also what I was aiming for since these are children's lunchboxes. However, it began to remind me too much of "Friends" for some reason. The right-most concept grabbed my attention the most because I thought it could be rearranged in so many different ways.

Colors

In terms of colors, I wanted to pick 5-6 to keep the palette broad. This reflects the varietal nature of the lunchboxes - there are so many designs with so many different characters on them. At first I had picked out very strong, bold colors. However, after working with them I decided to dull them and put them on a faded background color in order to mimic the dusty, vintage look of the old lunchboxes.

After I had narrowed down on the square typeface Chuck, I played around with the layout and the color application in the logomark.

I narrowed down to these variations on the logomark which could all be applied in color or black and white successfully.

Icons

In addition to the logomark, I also created five snack/food icons as part of the brand identity in order to add more graphic elements and personality. They were created with the same colors and to fit the same dimensions as the logomark letters.

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BRIEF

For this project I rebranded the Museum of Puppetry Arts. This project was created in response to an assignment in my Branding class at RISD.

Museum of Puppetry Arts

I started out by researching the museum itself, which is based in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a children's museum that tells the history of puppetry and features some of the most famous puppets in the world including the Muppets and Sesame Street pals! To begin my research, I created a mind map of everything I could possibly think of that related to puppets and puppetry. Inspiration for logos and branding can come from many different angles when looking at a subject.

Research

Next, I created a research chart. On one axis I chose five different research topics relating to puppets which I derived from my mind map: the museum itself, puppets, dolls / figurines / character creation, control, and performance/storytelling. On the other axis I put images, abstract ideas, actions, words, and materials/media. So for each box, I generated corresponding research for each type of research and each subject.

Sketches

High-fidelity Sketches

Next, I brought my sketches into Illustrator and began digitizing my best ideas and creating as many logotypes as possible.

Direction 1

After ideation, I took the two most promising sketch directions and created two completely different rough identities to choose between. For the first direction, I was inspired by the hinges and strings on marionettes.

Direction 2

The second direction I came up with was more abstract, but also inspired by marionettes.

Final Brand Guidelines

Finally, I got critique from the class and decided that the first direction was the most successful. I added a color palette and created a ton of brand materials and assets to make the brand feel as real as possible!

Engagement Piece

We were also instructed to think of an engagement piece, or some sort of interactive piece related to our museum. I created Henson Hall, a hallway in the museum that would imitate people as they walked through the hall. The shadows would be calculated and animated as if they were marionettes.

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