In spring 2016 I was commissioned by the Yale Office of New
Haven and State Affairs (University Properties & The Shops
at Yale) to redesign their College Night on Broadway identity
and create a matching suite of materials for the event.

The office was working on a fun, new rebranding of the multi-
college event (attended both by Yale students and by stud-
ents from colleges in the surrounding area), and they wanted
a new look for the night that was fresh and bright to match
its reinvention.

After discussing the specifics of the event and their target audience (college students, New Haveners, and local busines-
ses) I designed a festive logotype and identity system that
took ‘fresh and bright’ to heart.

The cyan-magenta-yellow (definitely bright!) identity system
was flexible enough to tailor each member of the suite of
designed materials to its specific use, while unifying all the
materials under the same voice.

Cyan, a cheery cousin of Yale blue, was chosen as the main
color for the posters. Since these posters would be pos-
ted in store windows (often tinted) high legibility in low-light
was key; cyan provided this legibility while maintaining a
bright color profile.

Yellow, the brightest of the three, was chosen for the rack
cards (which would be stacked on local stores’ counters) to
draw the eyes of customers. The map and list of discounts
used in previous years’ rack cards were confusing and hard
to navigate with. A slight redraw of the map and a revision
to the map’s language and list of discounts’ layout not only
made visiting participating stores easier, but also actively
encouraged it.

Magenta, the most visible from a distance, was chosen for
the directional signage to aide in orientation and navigation
during the event. Event-directed activities (like the raffle)
were typeset in blue while individual stores were typeset in
magenta to help participants easily distinguish between
activities and follow signs to a particular destination.

The Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY) is an annual
film festival held in the spring at different venues across New
Haven. The festival showcases new and thought-provoking
films about both current environmental issues and their social
impact. For a week-and-a-half in April, EFFY plays over 25
films and hosts discussions with both filmmakers and impor-
tant figures in the field of environmental policy following
the films.

I joined EFFY’s core team as the graphic designer in October
of 2015. As a team, we met weekly to discuss both logistics
and visions for the festival. One of those visions was to make
the EFFY identity more edgy, making reference to the grass-
roots movements showcased in the films for the festival. As a
result, I designed a new, grittier identity system for the festi-
val, flexible enough to be used for different social media pur-
poses, on all materials, and during the event.

As the designer, I was also tasked with designing all mater-
ials for the festival, from program posters to t-shirts to the lau-
rel used for film awards. The laurel (featured on the t-shirts)
was created using the hand-drawn white oak leaf and acorn
below, a variation on the symbol of the Yale School of For-
estry. The leaf was also used on materials as a unifying logo-
mark for the festival.

After being an internet radio DJ with WYBCx radio (Yale’s stu-
dent run radio station) for about a year, I became Design
Director (a board position) in the spring of 2016. My main job
as Design Director is to train/lead a band of brave under-
graduates in designing all materials (print, digital, and beyond!)
for the student radio station. I also am in charge of shaping
the identity for WYBCx and for the events it hosts.

The board and I agreed that, in the past, the station’s design
was a little too slick and commercial for the grunge-loving
indie community it was representing. As a result, my goal as
Design Director was to overhaul the identity for radio, elim-
inating the commercial logomark and logotype. WYCBx radio
is one of Yale’s largest student organizations, and it is well-
known across campus; therefore, I realized a rigid identity was
not needed. As a result, over the year I have been Design
Director, I have experimented with having no singular logo or
aesthetic for radio.

In taking this free-spirited design further, I have also exper-
imented with non-electronic ways of rendering designs, such
as collage or spray painting. As I have told my design train-
ees from day one:

Have fun! If y’all want to draw this out/scan it/cut it up/collage
like crazy/paint it/program it/make a video animation/spell
it out in cheerios, that is dope: ALL IS ENCOURAGED.

The projects shown here are a diverse sample of the of work
I have done myself for radio; I am currently working with
Ben Fischer (our general manager) on designing the new
website and will have a link up when it is completed!

I was commissioned, in the spring of 2016, to design a logo-
mark and logotype for the Ivy Leadership Summit, which would
take place in the fall of 2016.

The Ivy Leadership Summit is an annual event that takes place
at a different Ivy-League University each year. This year, the
Summit would take place at Yale. As a result, I sought to create
a logo that was unifying of all the Ivy-League but that was
also uniquely ‘Yale.’

I began with the symbol of the Ivy League: the ivy leaf. How-
ever, in drawing the leaf, I designed the angles and curves of
the leaf to match the serifs, arcs, and general angles used
in the Yale typeface.

As a result, the leaf was, at surface level, a symbol of the entire
Ivy-League; however, the manner in which the leaf was ren-
dered matched it perfectly with the Yale identity.

The visual connection to Yale was solidified by using slight var-
iations on the alternate ‘Yale’ colors set forth by the Univer-
sity Printer. More specifically, colors of fall foliage were chosen
in celebration of the season the Summit would take place in.

I concluded my project for the Ivy Leadership Summit by set-
ting forth a series of style guidelines for their designer, who
would design all other materials for the Summit.

A description of OncDRS from the Dana-Farber:


   ‘The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Oncology Data
Retrieval System (OncDRS) is a powerful suite of software
tools that provide investigators a holistic view of oncol-
ogy patient data . . . The Oncology Data Retrieval Sys-
tem enables investigators to rapidly and independently
obtain clinical and genomics data using an intuitive,
self-service interface. More specifically, OncDRS allows
faculty members and their designees to obtain aggre-
gated patient counts . . . and to get detailed patient
data sets . . .’


The OncDRS database, by nature, allows researchers to focus
both on specific data sets and larger trends within or across
clinical and genomic data.

It was this unifying narrative of data collection that served as
initial inspiration for the logo. The logo and logotype needed to
convey both the significance of individual data points and the
connections made between those data points. These connec-
tions transform the individual data points into more than the
sum of their parts. When viewed together, new pictures can be
created from trends in the data. Furthermore, the database
boasts the ability of collating personal, qualitative information
about patients. As a result, the logo would need to feel more
organic, rather than harshly analytical.

The OncDRS database will be one of many within a database
family developed by the Dana Farber. Therefore, the system
by which the logo would be developed would need to be flex-
ible enough to create future logos for newer databases within
the family. Furthermore, the identity would need to fit in with
the pre-existing identity of the Dana Farber.

I began with a grid of circles, emulating a plot of data points.
From this grid I drew a rotated version of the Dana Farber’s
torch logo. The grid naturally abstracts the shapes drawn on
it. The resulting shape now was ambiguous: it could now be
read as the Dana Farber torch, a DNA helix (appropriate given
the primarily genomic research presented in the database),
or a gestural, converging set of data points.

In order to convey connection between points on the grid,
I appealed to images of cellular mitosis: the process by which
one cell becomes two. By expanding the dots into one ano-
ther and beveling the intersections, the dots remained indivi-
dually readable, but their interconnection became an active
component of the design. Furthermore, the negative space
became highly activated: supporting data is as important as
negative data — only with both is a full picture discerned.

This system of building a logo on the grid and connecting-
the-dots proved highly effective at conveying the ordered-yet-
organic data connection process boasted by OncDRS. The
typeface, Gotham, was chosen for its strict 45°, 90° and 180° terminals, which emulated the geometry of the grid.

The grid system successfully created a dynamic and thema-
tically sound logo, and the system used offers near infi-
nite possibilities for variation for future logos — thereby the
process successfully met all of the required conditions
and specifications.

Shown here is a zine I made as proof-of-concept for my Sen-
ior Thesis Project (to be completed for May, 2017). The meta-
physical concept I will be wrestling with in this project will
be the nature of analytic/rational thought. Robert Pirsig, in
‘Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,’ describes analy-
tic thought as a super sharp knife:


   ‘When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to
experience, something is always killed in the process.
That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts.

Mark Twain’s experience comes to mind, in which, after
he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot
the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost
its beauty.

Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in
the arts . . . something is always created too. And instead
of just dwelling on what is killed it’s important also to
see what’s created and to see the process as a kind of
death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad,
but just is.’


To tackle this dichotomy of ‘something killed/something cre-
ated,’ I will be embarking on a book mash-up project: I will
take two books with content that I have either generated or
curated, and mash them up into one book. Simple enough.

However, the method of mashup will involve audience par-
ticipation. The two books will be superimposed on top on one-
another. However, only one book will be legible at a time. In
order to swap between the two books, the physical book will
need to be cut in half (with a saw, scissors, a sharp knife . . . 
analytic thought?) and the spine flipped to the other side (see
diagram below). As a result, both books will be inseparable
but mutually exclusive. Swapping between books, therefore,
creates one book, but ‘kills’ the other. However, it is impor-
tant to note that while only one book is legible at a time, both
will alway exist.

This structure promotes for a unique system of dialogue
between two books. By occupying the same physical space,
conflicting arguments can interact visually. However, one
book (chosen by the reader) will be dominant over the other,
at a particular time. This, however, is exactly how run-of-
the-mill arguments occur: it’s hard (impossible?) to see one
side clearly while focussed on the other.

The nature of swapping between books will be pretty difficult,
and there will be a ton of loose pages once the book is cut.
This difficulty, however, brings up the question: what happens
when the tools of our analysis (analytic thought) create too
many moving parts?

Finally, the medium of a book was chosen since the book is
widely seen as a vessel for a corpus of knowledge. However,
by actively destroying and manipulating the physical book,
the book will no longer be just a corpus of knowledge: it will
also be a physical corpus. A body.

‘Allure’ is a book project completed for Henk Van Assen’s
Advanced Graphic Design course at Yale University. The pro-
ject was to create ‘designed response’ to 1 of 3 academic
papers presented by several faculty of the Yale School of Man-
agement. The paper I chose was ‘Uninformative Advertis-
ing as an Invitation to Search’ by Dina Mayzlin and Jiwoong
Shin (‘Marketing Science.’ Volume 30, no. 4).

The concept behind the paper was that advertisement inher-
ently has a limited bandwith. As a result, when a company
advertises their product, they are forced to choose what infor-
mation to present to their audience. The paper goes on to
explain and prove using a mathematical model that if a com-
pany has the best product, it is beneficial to them to commun-
icate no information about their product. If a company has
a ‘runner-up’ product, it is beneficial for them to communicate
information about their product that challenges the claim
that the best product has on the market. If a company has a
bad product, they don’t have much to say, so it’s beneficial
for them not to communicate anything.

In responding to the paper, I challenged a core assumption of
the paper: communication in advertising must be language-
based. To counter this core assumption I turned to systems of
communication in advertising that were inherently non-verbal,
a perfect example being the bodies/models used in fashion
ads. I was also interested in the concept of a limited bandwith
of communication, so I decided to limit my bandwith of body-
language to that of hands.

Searching for a large library of advertisements, I eventually
decided on Allure Magazine (November 2016). Then, I scanned
all 154 hands in the magazine and collated them to create
the book. The book shows the extensive (infinite?) and highly
expressive (‘alluring’ . . . a-ha! The title makes sense now!)
ways hands communicate content, challenging the assump-
tion that verbal communication should be considered first,
or in isolation, in advertisement analysis.