Book

I'd like to make the book project a documentation of my daily life, of what I did and how I felt. So I took pictures of my outfits folded into different gestures and rearranged these photos along with two sentences from our daily conversation:
- How are you? 
- I'm fine.
They are probably the most commonly used greeting in our life, but the inspiration was originally from a 1995 movie named Love Letter directed by Shunji Iwai. My concept was to address the impact of past, so I integrated pieces of handwritten diary with coffee stains and used digitally-made notepad paper as the background. For the final presentation, instead of binding them into a book, I'm thinking of stringing each page and hanging them from the ceiling.

Some prototype pages (trying out an old wall as background):

7.9 Sample Page 1

7.9 Sample Page 2

Revised page details for final presentation: 
Each page is double-sided and consists of the same photos and diary page. I played with a variety of rotation choices to make each back page similar, but not exactly the same as the front page.

7.12 Page 1 front

7.12 Page 1 back

7.12 Page 2 front

7.12 Page 2 back

7.12 Page 5 front

7.12 Page 5 back

Setup:

7.15 Front

7.15 Back

Gestalt Compositions

A few Gestalt compositions that I tried out recently, using lines, circles and squares only.

Movement

Dominance

Symmetry

About Me

As a rising senior Psychology major at Wesleyan University, I study human cognition and personality. I have extensive research experience in psychopathology, event-related potential techniques and quantitative analysis. 

Currently, I'm taking a summer intensive graphic design course at Parsons, NYC because I am interested in creating meaningful user experiences. I’d like to apply my knowledge in psychology to understand people’s motivations, solve practical problems and realize great ideas.

Sculptural Text: Voice

"Voice" is a word that I find particularly relevant to my personal memory. It is from a dual memoir named Divided Minds written by two identical twins. The older suffers from schizophrenia with a early onset in adolescence whereas the younger becomes a psychiatrist. The book gives a unique first-handed account of this severe form of mental disorder and inspired me to narrow down my research concentration to psychopathology and affectivity as an undergraduate. Hearing talking voices, or hallucination (perceiving sounds without the presence of physical auditory stimuli) is one of the most typical symptoms that characterize schizophrenia and the twins mentioned multiple times in the book how hallucination affects their life and interpersonal relationships.

This piece of sculptural text is made up of table salt and chia seeds. The combination of these two materials is intended to create a sense of conflict since seeds are usually associated with growth, vitality and positivity whereas excess salt is often considered a major impediment to germination. I used way more salt than chia seeds so that salt dominates the piece and chia seeds only constitute a small portion of the background. This is not only to balance the black and white in the whole piece, but also to emphasize how often schizophrenic patients struggle to tell what is real verus what is not. Ever since the onset of the first breakout, they live in a nebula mixed of reality and hallucination. Voice is such a commonly used means of expression and communication in our daily life. However, hearing voices may be the worst nightmare for people with schizophrenia because it blurs the boundary of reality and imagination.

Museum Reflection: Feel Others Feel

My favorite piece from the the Sagmeister & Walsh Exhibition is Feel Others Feel that explores the theme of empathy and perspective taking. I'm so intrigued by this piece because research has shown that empathy is one of the most important and essential concepts in positive psychology, a recent branch of modern psychology that aims to understand what makes individuals, families and societies thrive.This piece of typography work is made of white plastic and each letter is filled in with white paint. The paint is activated by sound waves, which connects all the letters and subtly illustrates the capacity of each individual letter to recognize the movement experienced by one another. The paint mimics the texture of milk, a daily product that I personally associate with family, warmth, and more generally, a sense of belonging. The font choice of a rounded type that eliminates all the sharp terminals also adds to the connectedness of the piece. Both the material and the text enable the letters to convey a message of understanding, recognizing and appreciating what others feel.