Digital Paintings

Pressing the Shutter

Beauty Is Defined By...

Orchestra

Coming in this summer!  

Coming soon in March!  



With an idea of designing the hypothetical exhibition at MoMA PS1, Psychedelic Perfume is project that focuses on the editorial design associated a Varporwave-themed exhibition. It is predicting that potentially this contemporary subculture, Vaporwave, and its related art, music, and design will be formally recognized by the broad masses especially Millennial generation in the future. 

The project itself not only aims to present a comprehensive research of this unique subculture, but also criticizes the existence behind Vaporwave. It is a subculture that firmly associated with the Internet world, nostalgia culture, and capitalism of the 1990s. Vaporwave, in its essence, is a statement that reveals the broad masses’ reaction to economic bubble collapse such as 1997 Asian financial crisis.

As the core item within this project, this exhibition catalogue, demonstrates the context, history, fact, and anatomy of Vaporwave including its art, music, and design. The overall design inherits the core aesthetic of Vaporwave such as grid, Greek plaster, palm trees, Asian languages, and 90s computer interfaces. Typographical choices are intentionally made to match the uncanny, psychedelic, technological, and dreamy aspects of Vaporwave.



Art Direction: Yi Mao
Designer: Yi Mao
Photography: Charlie Sin
Stylist: Yi Mao & Charlie Sin
*DISCLAIMER: This project is not for any types of commercial uses.

Instructor: Simon Johnston
Client: ArtCenter College of Design

Boudin Bakery is a bakery and restaurant chain originally from San Francisco, California, known for its sourdough bread. It was established in 1849 by Isidore Boudin, son of a family of master bakers from Burgundy, France, by blending the sourdough prevalent among miners in the Gold Rush with French techniques and longevity.

Today, it is famous for its “Bowl of Soup”, which is a sourdough boule with clam chowder inside of it. In 2018, with well over 160 years of history, Boudin decided to preset its audience with a new brand identity and to-go packaging system, one that represents its same spirit but with a 21st century vibe.

Goal:  100% Plastic Free Food Packaging

In ArtCenter College of Design’s first 100% plastic free packaging course, students were challenged to rebrand a fast or fast casual food brand, and redesign their packaging system to be fully sustainable, using no plastic or bioplastic. Students were challenged to use new and old materials including biomaterials such as wood pulp, plant cellulose, food waste, grass, algae, and mushrooms that are sustainably sourced, and at the end of their lives, can be composted into bio-mass to regenerate depleted farming soils.

Students were no allowed to use the following materials:
PET (Polyethylene terephthalate), PE (Polyethelene) (LDPE and HDPE variants), LDPE (Low Density Polyethylene), HDPE (High Density Polyethylene), PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride), PP (Polypropylene), PS (Polystyrene), PC (Polycarbonate), PMMA (Acrylic), ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene), PA (Nylon), PLA (Polylactic Acid—Starch Based Bioplastic), Any Non-Edible “Biodegradable Plastic” or “Bioplastic” (AcC, PBS, PCL, PES, PVA, PHA).



Art Direction: Yi Mao
Design: Yi Mao
Photography: Jack Strutz
Stylist: Jack Strutz & Yi Mao
Hand model: Lemon Zhai
*specially thanks to Zack Ludlow for Solidworks demos. 
*DISCLAIMER: This project is not for any types of commercial uses.

Instructor: Andrew Gibbs, Founder, Dieline & Partner, A Plastic Planet & Jessica Deseo, Partner, Dieline
Text Editing & Instructor: Polly Geller
Client: ArtCenter College of Design

*for further and more comprehensive information & imagery, please visit https://www.behance.net/gallery/73986661/Boudin-SFfood-packaging

“Rebelle” is a project which was born from the Experimental Type class at ArtCenter College of Design. “Rebelle” can be understood as exploring and practicing typography through fashion and clothing. From a more macro standpoint in the fashion industry, “Rebelle” is a graphic designer’s response to the wide-spread notion of breaking the boundary between high fashion and streetwear. It is essentially an upper level streetwear (also called “luxury streetwear”) created by a Gen Y generation designer, revealing the will to be part of other existing luxury streetwear brand explorers, such as Off-White, Vetements, Undercover, John Elliott, and Fear of God.

The project contains clothing designs, fashion photography, a promotional video, stationery, the brand catalogue with a line-sheet, a brand manual, a packaging design set, and collateral. The core design philosophy of Rebelle is using typography as the primary approach to deliver direct and indirect communication to a broader audience then the Gen Y perspective. For Rebelle, typography is an intrinsically aesthetic language carrying meaning and content through various mediums, such as clothing, jewelry, books, posters, motions, etc. One major design approach is to use words, sentences, and paragraphs along with powerful imagery to directly present Rebelle’s audience with seasonal themes. Rebelle also inspires, presenting its own attitude and raising specific social topics through indirect communication like using subtexts conveyed by paralanguage. This can be largely found in Rebelle’s “Ré•volution” campaign posters, such as “This Is Not a Rebellion” and “This Is Not an Execution”. By placing the word “Re•volution” up-side down shows a parallel with many Renaissance paintings used, indicating information could only be seen by God. Using imagery is the secondary approach for Rebelle to communicate with its audience. For Rebelle’s first season (“Rebelle Collection” and “Ré•volution” Collection), it is applying paintings and visual elements from the Romanticism period to imply that rebellions have occurred throughout human history. Each period has its own type of rebellion. Three Romanticism paintings that documents the revolutions occurred in Spain, France and Belgium are, “The Third of May 1808” (by Francisco Goya), “Liberty Leading the People” (by Eugène Delacroix), and “Episode of the Belgian Revolution of 1830” (by Gustaf Wappers).  

Rebelle’s tone is established as a nostalgic sensation mainly by a set of 80s–90s color palette in contrast to the overall sophisticated design and tender visual execution. Fashion photography is a major part of “Rebelle” achieved with the help of a professional photographer, a fashion stylist, a hair & make-up artist (HMUA) and two professional models. The emergence of Rebelle can be seen as a millennial’s response to contemporary graphic and fashion designs. It can be also understood as a brave reaction to the counterculture that keeps breaking the boundaries between luxury and streetwear. In fact, Rebelle may be seen as an idea that “officially” makes graphic design and fashion design collaborate with each other. Rebelle, as a newborn fashion brand with a graphic spirit, reveals a sense of unruliness, rebellion, and optimism that have long been in existence. Additionally, it is an expression of its own type of millennial zeitgeist somberness and effervescence.



Art Direction: Yi Mao
Design: Yi Mao
Photography: Charlie Sin
Stylist: Sondra Choi
HMUA: Shu Zhang
Model: Kaylin & Pierce (Wilhemina)
*specially thanks to Chelsea Phuong and Oriana Ren. 

*DISCLAIMER: This project is not for any types of commercial uses. 

Instructor: Cheri Gray 
Text Editing & Instructor: Polly Geller
Client: ArtCenter College of Design

*for further and more comprehensive information & imagery, please visit https://www.behance.net/gallery/70755539/Rebelle