Ana Bungag

After seeing what happened in the 2020 US Presidential elections las November, I realized how confusing and complicated it is to vote in the United States. With every state having their own process of voting (accepting mail-in ballots vary from state to state) and the Electoral College being the determining factor of who wins in the election instead of the popular votes, I feel like this process seems too convoluted. But, I believe that this process can be changed with much simpler and straightforward solutions.

For me, I think a better voting process would be is to have the popular vote be the determining factor in choosing the winner instead of the Electoral College. The popular vote is quicker to count and every voter’s vote is equal, which what democracy should be about. Explaining the process of the Electoral College, its history, and why it doesn’t give every citizen’s vote equal representation would take too much time for this elevator pitch because of how complicated it is.

However, this change will take a long time to happen because it requires so many efforts for lawmakers to fully agree on it, especially during this time where we have a bipartisan government that have strikingly different views on every issue. We also have to re-design polling stations and ballots in every state and city across the country. But starting in small steps can go a long way!

Side note: This is quite a challenging assignment for me because I have only lived in the US for 7 years and the voting process is so confusing for me to follow!

Everyone that’s been there for me, supported me, and changed me are the ones that give me hope. They’ve taught me valuable lessons and I cherish them dearly. This is for them.

The issue that I am passionate talking about isn’t really something that is easy to solve, however, what I want to do is to shed light or send a message towards this issue. Racism towards Asians and Asian-Americans have been more prevalent today because of the pandemic, and small businesses/restaurants have suffered from it so much. Seeing videos online of Asian people getting harassed or threatened by random strangers on was so painful to watch because these people have nothing to do at all with the coronavirus and they have been targeted just because they look East Asian. It even feels more painful because I’ve experienced something similar to it myself.

And so, a way for me to express my frustrations and anger towards these ignorant people is by spreading kindness and helping small businesses, particularly Asian restaurants around the Chinatown-International District. I also want to use my creative skills in design to spread my message of kindness, support, togetherness especially during these times. There’s a local artist named Monyee Chau that has made some amazing posters/designs about combatting anti-Asian racism and it has inspired me as a graphic designer to use my skills as a tool to make my voice, and lots of other people’s voices, be heard. I’ve also been a part of an organization in the Chinatown-International District that helps in supporting the community and also provides safety. I’ve made some posters for them in the past where they encourage more people to volunteer and also promote events that contribute to the community.

It may seem like what I’m doing is quite small, but to me, it’s more important that the message that I want to send out has at least affected someone.

Where do I see myself working after I graduate SCCA? For now, what I’m thinking about is working for a tech company here in Seattle. Maybe in Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. But, I would love to be a graphic designer/UX designer for Nintendo of America!

The reason why I want to start off working in a corporate environment is that I want to be able to develop experiences especially in working with teams. Another reason is that I feel like I am not ready yet to become a freelancer/contractor and so I want to focus first on building my skills and connections until I am comfortable enough to explore other ventures.

As a kid, I always knew that I wanted to be an artist. I’ve always loved drawing, painting, and designing different things. I was big on watching cartoons and anime that at some point I also considered to be an animator. I knew that being an animator was a bit of a reach for me to accomplish, still, anime in particular has heavily influenced my style of art.

But when we moved to the US from the Philippines, my dreams of becoming an artist was pushed at the back of my head. To make ends meet, I had to work while also study in school and so I never got to focus on what I wanted to do when I enter college. After graduating high school, my parents wanted me to become a nurse or any profession in the medical field but I was never interested in it. To compromise, I told them I was going to pursue a college degree in Business and maybe become an accountant.

So, I did get an Associate’s degree in Business and then did a Bachelor’s degree in International Business. However, during my last year in school, I felt less passionate about my degree. After graduating, I worked at a credit union and realized how miserable I felt doing something I don’t love at all. After quitting my job, I decided to finally do something that I love. While I was in college, I took a Digital Arts class as an elective and it was one of the few classes I truly enjoyed. I then realized that maybe graphic design is what I’ve always wanted to do.

And so, that’s how I decided to join this program, and so far, I’m loving it! It feels so nice being able to be creative again and explore new things that I’ve never done before. Online classes have been my least favorite type of class back in college because of the lack of connection between the students and the professors, trying to do online classes again is a bit of a struggle but because of Zoom and other communication/collaboration apps, it has helped connect me to my other classmates and my instructors way better than my older online classes.

With the pandemic, the election, and some personal problems going on, it’s been very difficult for me to juggle my schoolwork, my part-time job, and everything in between. But, I want to be successful in this program and I want to be able to achieve being a graphic designer (or maybe ux designer?). I will try my very best to learn new skills and grow as a person as well.

This is how I redesigned Calpico’s logo.

Calpico is a lactobacilli drink and also a non-carbonated soda that originated in Japan and can be mostly found at Asian grocery stores or at the Asian section in regular groceries. I love drinking this whenever I eat anything spicy or on a hot, summery day.

It was pretty difficult for me to redesign their logo because I couldn’t brainstorm a lot of ideas that’s related to the drink and the original logo itself is so simple. Their website doesn’t say a lot about their business ethics but they do mention a brief history of how they came up with the drink and so I tried to base off my design there. The words that I came up with to help me design the logos are healthy, milky, lactobacilli, slim, blue, bottle, and clean.

For this week’s homework assignment, my story will be about making popcorn chicken, but not the popcorn chicken people usually get in groceries or bubble tea restaurants. This popcorn chicken is made with blended chicken thighs ( like a paste, we didn’t have any food processor) and popcorn instead of the usual white meat chicken and whatever breading other people use.

This idea came about when I challenged my boyfriend to cook something experimental. My first idea was to have him cook something Fall-themed that doesn’t heavily rely on pumpkins. But during our visit to Oasis with a friend, I got some popcorn chicken. And then, they started talking about it and thinking of ways to make it literally. After hearing all of their wild ideas of how to make literal popcorn chicken, I decided to have my boyfriend do this instead. And so, this is how I imagined my story will go:

1. Have all the ingredients on the table.
2. Prepare the food.
3. Pile all the finished prepped food.
4. Cook!
5. Place cooked food for presentation and tasting.
6. Taste-test!
7. React

After storyboarding this idea, I came up with these 7 shots:

I’m glad that my story happened how I imagined it to be. However, experimenting on such a strange food like this had us thinking too much about what IS a popcorn chicken. With that, we made a bunch of different iterations of the dish that made it an even more fun and entertaining story.

So what was the best version of popcorn chicken? We’ve collectively decided that it was wrapping the popcorn with the blended chicken, coating it with panko breading, and then deep-frying it. The texture of the popcorn was quite chewy but the flavor of the chicken and the crunchiness of the panko made it better than I expected.

Overall, I enjoyed making this assignment because I get to try new things, challenge my boyfriend to cook something out-of-the-box, and spend time with friends as well. We had so much fun that after eating all of the popcorn chicken, we started brainstorming more cooking challenges we want to do in the future! I am already very excited for the next one!

Hello World! Here is my first blog post for the Graphic Design program! I am very excited to be here!!!