Art and design encompass a broad spectrum of practices. Often, it is treated as the foundation of many other professional fields. I agree that art and design introduce many concepts that apply to almost everything in our lives. More importantly, studying art and design taught me to discern beauty and inspirations around me. They bring peace to my mind.
My artworks aimed to use the elements of art and the principles of design to create diverse visual experiences. I value clarity, cleanliness, and details. I prefer my work to seem well polished and thought-out. Despite the materials I use, I strive for execution.
Art & Design
Typography
Typography is the study of text and its arrangement on a page. It manipulates fonts, size, space and composition to convey meanings and express ideas.
Typography Poster #1
"Salad is Leaves
with Sauce"
Typography Poster #2
"Juice is bad for you unless it cost $20 a bottle, right, adults?"
Typography Poster #3
"All adults do is lie
to themselves"
This is one typography study in the Typography series. I used the font Didot and played around with layout and composition to visually demonstrate the quote. The stripes behind the word "Leaves" formed the shape of a leaf to highlight the meaning of the word. In hopes to bring more playfulness to the work, I used negative space to create more contrast and emphasis.
Typography Poster #2 is the second poster in the Typography series. Similar to "Salad...Sauce", I used the font Didot to study typography layout and negative space. I placed the first half of the quote in the shape of a bottle to draw attention to the key element "bottle" in the quote.
Typography Poster #3 is the last poster in the Typography series. Similar to the other two, I used the font Didot to study typography layout and negative space. In this poster, I mainly focused on arranging texts and manipulating sizes.
Jostle
Reciprocal
Typography Experiment
The work Jostle is a typography layout that uses its form and composition to express the meaning of the word. The letters of the word are distorted in a way to mimic the state of jostling. I hand-drew the font so that it demonstrates more vitality.
Reciprocal is a typography layout that focus on conveying the meaning of the word through creative approaches. I created a "mirror image" of the word "reciprocal" to visually illustrate the definition of reciprocal.
This piece contains a series of 6 individual typography layout experiments. It serves as a way for me to explore the arrangement of texts on a square canvas. Additionally, I also studied the relationship between texts and empty spaces. In order to emphasize solely on the composition and the white spaces, text content was removed and replaced by lorem ipsum.
Layout & Product Design
Other types of graphic design works I've explored. Moving on from typography studies, layout and brand design ask designers to apply what they know about typography and other design elements to establish an impression.
NAZAR Brand Design
Brand design for sun-glasses. It includes a set of 3 business card designs, 1 set of wrap designs and 2 sets of bag designs. The work focused on experimenting brand design from scratch, doing brand research and brainstorming to substantiating
all designs.
Discover the Beauty of Nature
This layout design used images and lorem ipsum to experiment with page composition. Different from typography posters or other typography experimentations, layout design investigates the application of the grid system and values more heavily on user navigation habits. It aimed to make sure the title is clear and visible, and the texts are easy to read and follow.
Illustrations
These are the physical illustrations that I've made. My illustrations usually remain monochromatic. These illustrations emphasize basic drawing skills and the use of traditional drawing mediums.
City Landscape
This is a city landscape illustration. The landscape depicts a river back in my hometown in Shanghai, China. This art piece was drawn on cardboard after masking the cardboard with a layer of newspaper. I used ink as the medium to create textures and depth using lines and strokes.
Still Life - Snacks on the Table
Model Drawing Practice 1 & 2
Both artworks were 40-minute observational model drawings. Model Drawing 1 was done in conté, while Model Drawing 2 was done in charcoal. These drawings were my initial explorations of human anatomy with a specific focus on the head and upper torso.
This is a still-life drawing done in charcoal on paper. The goal of this work is to illustrate what I observed as realistic as possible. One challenge of this artwork was to differentiate the relative darkness and depth of each object in relation to its surroundings. Similar to the landscape illustration I did, another challenge that I faced was to successfully depict each object's texture through different rendering techniques.
Model Drawing Practice 3
This is another 40-minute observational model drawing done in conté. This time, I studied the full body. I had to think about ratios, proportions, angles, and the intricate spatial relationship among the limbs, the core, and the head. Additionally, I needed to consider the fact that the person is situated on a flat surface. Therefore, I also had the chance to explore a subject's relative space in a physical environment.