A preface
I have to thank my freshman year self for looking out for my senior year self. I’ve kept a running list of projects I’m interested in working on, topics I’m interested in researching and discussing, people I’m interested in learning from, after a few midnight moments where I woke up with a great idea, didn’t write it down because I “swore I would remember in the morning” and then totally didn’t. I have a perpetual fear that my creativity is not a bottomless well, but more like a non-renewable resource like gas. If creativity is the gas, and my body and mind is a car, the car would be a puttering, sad little sedan (just learned about that this semester).
Thesis Concept
I knew I wanted to talk about grind and burnout culture, I spent a lot of my junior year working on projects talking about Asian American culture and how that influenced my work ethic and my approach to academics and my social life and professional life. For this semester, I really struggled with scaling down the topic to a manageable amount given the time frame and project load, especially with the intention of continuing to work on this project next semester.
I decided to frame this project within the context of a recent AIGA article that was released in their Eye on Design Magazine, asking “What would you do with 168 hours?” (the number of hours in a week). The article is about optimizing your workweek, but it called into question a greater question on a bigger scale, what was I doing with my 168 hours?
With my long list, I decided to try to do a project a day, some of which are documented here below:
This semester I attended the Forbes Under 30 Conference in Detroit, Michigan as a Forbes Under 30 Scholar. My experience at this event was a cause for reflection and introspection, but I wanted to stray away from responding directly to the event and utilizing that content as the main focus of my final Graphic Design Studio project of the decade (!!!).
Lexicon Book
For my lexicon book and final I really struggled with separating the Lexicon Book and the Final Project as two separate projects as opposed to one single project with two parts. I ended up just trying to create as much content and assets as possible with the limited time and heavy workload of the semester. For my lexicon book, I ended up approaching my project like a plan for the future. I wanted to create an “infinite scroll” feeling book, originally as an accordion book but with the ultimate final product as a spiral bound book. The content was taken directly from my list of thesis ideas, with commentary and notes highlighted through typographic choices.
Final Project
My final project was photography based. I was really excited about Dutch still life, and wanted to utilize lighting and shadow techniques that I worked with while I was still a painting major and in digital photography. I wanted to break down the “168 Hours” concept into just the idea of staying up all night and eating like crap and the grittiness of late nights and long days, but also framing this duality of a “perfect life” with the reality of the grind culture life.
Thesis & Final Review Takeaways
At my final review, I got some mixed feedback on semester work, some talking about the lack of a definite personality and voice, which was understandable given the first two group projects. Two of the critics within my final review were professors I’ve had before, and they reacted strongly to the thesis because of our previous relationships. Generally, there wasn’t as strong of a reaction to my final product, but a general agreement that this was a good jumping off point for next semester. Some expressed interest in a response based project about the duality and performative aspects of social media platforms like LinkedIn, or further exploring photography as a medium.