table · of · contents
I / FINAL OUTCOME
II / PROCESS
III / REFLECTIONS
I • FINAL OUTCOME
I ended up basing all of my works on the Times New Roman font, exploring how material/medium and placement can affect the meaning of a type. The standardised font style is what these 3 pieces have in common and I definitely enjoyed revisiting and reimagining a font style that I dismissed (a really long time ago when I discovered the plethora of fonts on the internet as a kid) as plain, traditional, and boring.
• • • • •
My name is Liying, and I’m a chronic bookworm 
I’m someone who can’t resist a good read. I completely blame my mother for this, because when I was younger she used to bring me to the public library every weekend where we’d stay for hours. Back in those days e-books didn’t yet exist, and I loved the feeling and the sound of turning pages. I still enjoy those qualities in the present day, but the good old paperback novel perennially lurking at the bottom of my bag has now been replaced by the sleek Kindle paperwhite. I was resistant to this change, initially – felt like I was violating the integrity of a novel, losing it’s magic – but the convenience was undeniable.
The chronic, incurable bookworm in me has experienced and loved both new and old in the literary world, and this is the essence that I set out to capture in this piece. Taking elements from both the old school novel and the new age kindle, I wanted to show the timelessness of a well written narrative, and how it really doesn’t matter how you enjoy your books as long as it’s a good story. I also intended for a second meaning in this piece – not to judge a book by it’s cover. An initially unassuming paper box, the hidden text of my name is only visible when it’s lit up. Sometimes reading deeper can reveal surprising things, only if you have the patience and thought to look.
• • • • •
My name is Liying, and I’m a square peg in a round hole
This piece speaks to the part of me that shies away from large groups of strangers, the part of me who is sometimes (more often than not) an anxious wreck with a deathly fear of speaking up in public. Growing up, this is the part of me that felt like a fish out of water among my peers who wanted to be accountants and lawyers and engineers and psychologists, when all I knew was that I could never be like them, that I would never want to spend the rest of my life in a job like that.
I wanted to address the obvious geometric imagery in this piece, with literal square peg(s) in the round hole. I picked my Chinese name to form the square pegs because although it’s something I’ve had since I was born, I’m not in tune with that side of my heritage and even now feel awkward conversing in Mandarin. The CMYK colour scheme is a link to the reason for my percieved difference growing up – that I wanted, unlike my immediate circle of friends and family, to work in the creative industry. To further emphasise the odd-one-out aspect, the square pegs were done in black to create a jarring effect against the cyan, magenta and yellow prints of my English initials.
• • • • •
My name is Liying, and I’m a menace to myself
I was a clumsy kid. Now I’m a clumsy adult. Age did not come with grace, and access to a widening plenitude of sharp objects and hot tools have just created more opportunity for me to unwittingly harm myself. This Dadaesque collage was inspired when I fell and scraped my knee (surprise). I wanted to use the delicate medium of thread and stereotypical femininity of embroidered works to create something harsh and almost creepy to look at, to challenge the conventional notion that women should be gentle and graceful creatures.
• • • • •
My name is Liying, and I hoard junk
Honestly, the title says it all. I love loitering around hobby stores and dodgy places like the Thieves’ Market, looking at the mishmash of unlikely and unexpected objects. Useless things are my weakness. I also feel like the objects I’ve included are representative of some personality quirks – the clownfish because I love finding nemo (also animated films in general), the car because I was a tomboy and used to play Hotwheels (does anyone remember that even) with my brother all the time, the green witch’s finger because I have an inexplicable appreciation for things that are mildly unsettling and ……. the list goes on. I also wanted this piece to revolve around the concept that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.
II • PROCESS
• Chronic bookworm •
This was constructed with the paper from an old book. I cut it up (blasphemy, I know) and traced my name on pages from the book. I chose to use this instead of regular paper because I had envisioned being able to see the text in the name when backlit against the other pages – so that it’ll look like the font was constructed out of smaller words. This effect didn’t come through very well in the end- only the silhouette was clear. If I were to recreate this, I would consider a larger font size and printing on tracing paper so that the words more obvious than the silhouette.
I pasted the letters on a clear A5 photoframe and created a box covered with pages from the book. The lighting was a challenge as I had to find small, battery-operated lights that would emanate a steady white-ish light instead of the flickering ones popular on christmas trees (and also the most commonly available). The most feasible option I found, 3 meters of battery powered fairy lights, ended up being too dim for the words to be clear (shown in the last photo) and I ended up using my phone’s light for the sake of my financial well being 🙁 Looking back, I could have considered using nightlights instead of a string of fairy lights.
• Square peg in a round hole •
To incorporate a more typographic element into this composition, I decided to stencil my initials in the shape of a circle with various opacities of acrylic paint, leaving two ~square pegs~ blank in the center of the circle. I initially wanted to use gold leaf to create a gilded look but decided it wouldn’t go with the CMYK theme.
• A menace to myself •
In addition to photos of bruises and scrapes I found online, I took photos of my hands and printed them out to use as material for the collage.
I really enjoyed creating this piece – embroidery is something I do as a hobby to unwind. However, I found that embroidering on cartridge paper created different challenges and required more caution than working with fabric. If the puncture holes were too close to each other, the paper would tear and the entire chunk would flap loose. On top of that, I had to constantly flatten the paper so that it wouldn’t curl up especially with the longer, connecting thread. Even so, I was pleased with the outcome and I enjoyed the texture of the slightly raised thread against the 2d paper images.
• A product of the times •
(didn’t make it to the final)
This idea was rejected because I felt like it didn’t fit in with the theme of the final compositions, but I wanted to share it anyway because I do still sort of like it. I wanted to show how appearances – or what we use to paint an image for ourselves – have become our identity. These are two images that were spliced together in photoshop and folded for a very primitive and low-budget lenticular effect.
• I hoard junk •
This was the most straightforward and definitely my favourite to make, although it was an unexpected decision. I started, similarly, by tracing the letter L on Microsoft Word and transferring it to the backing. Then I delved into my stash of nonsense and picked out bits to incorporate into the design. I had intended to fill the background in, but didn’t want the composition to be too overcrowded and busy.
III • FEEDBACK
The positive:
- an exploration of different mediums/techniques
- workmanship
The negative:
- incoherent, doesn’t look like the work of one artist
- lacks an overarching concept/style to tie the works together
- more thought could have been given to the documentation process
IV • REFLECTION
I definitely feel like I could’ve done much better – most notably when conceptualising the project. As I’d explained, the nitty gritty details bore me and I prefer to work intuitively (that’s just a nice way of putting it) but I realise that planning is absolutely necessary especially at higher levels. My main takeaway from this exercise is that good design is as much the concept as it is the execution, and that great design takes into consideration a plethora of considerations from the development stages to the connotations of certain materials or methods of documentation and how it throws the final design into a different light. I also realised just how crucial it is for the pieces to look coherent together. Although I enjoy my compositions as standalone pieces, seeing them together and comparing them with everyone else’s work makes me feel like something vital is missing from mine. This is the main issue I intend to improve on in subsequent assignments.
Additionally, I feel like I’ve been relying too much on materials and objects to speak for my designs. Although it’s the style I naturally gravitate towards and what interests me the most, I think I should definitely work on conveying a message through the actual imagery instead.
Overall, I really enjoyed the critique session because it was a very inspiring and positive environment, and also completely fascinating to learn how other people view themselves and how they chose to express it. The diversity of styles and techniques, especially the animated or more digitalised works, were a huge eye-opener for someone like me who’s never really given much thought to that realm of design.
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