Shinyu

Freedom to Express
Freedom of expression to me feels like breathing when I speak my mind. Just as we don’t consciously think about breathing, true freedom of expression, to me, means expressing myself without being conscious of my surroundings. Therefore, the freedom to express is the ability to voice my opinions effortlessly in any situation. Moreover, while criticism can exist in the face of freedom of expression, condemnation should not.

Freedom to Explore
The freedom to explore usually refers to a new space or area. However, for me, I think interest in a new field or idea that I want to learn is the freedom to explore. In my case, the entire process of immigrating to the United States and filling out my personality is a freedom to explore.

Freedom from Expectation

Freedom from expectations is becoming the master of my own life. If I were to start living my life according to someone else’s expectations, it would be acting according to someone else’s views, not living my own life. Therefore, freedom from expectations is trusting myself, listening to my inner voice, and cultivating my life accordingly.

HOME

AWAY

I call my mom the Queen of Wisdom. She may seem gentle on the surface, but she’s stronger inside than anyone I know. They say my mom was born and raised in a small island village in the countryside, where she regarded nature as a friend and grew up alongside it. As I grew up, my mom showed me a lot of creative things. Each time, she would say that because she grew up in the countryside, she couldn’t easily enjoy the activities available in the city, so playing with nature allowed her creativity to flourish. My mom always took pride in her background and considered every moment as a precious gift, showing us, her daughters, that aspect of life as well.

After becoming an adult, my mom became interested in early childhood education and became a kindergarten teacher. She has been running kindergartens and daycare centers for almost 40 years now. A common flower in my mom’s hometown is the camellia, which blooms beautifully red even in winter. Inspired by the camellia’s appearance, my mom named the daycare center she runs “Dongbaek,” which means camellia in English.

Thinking of my mom, who loves flowers and decorates our house with different flowers every week, I first drew a vase, followed by flowers branching out into shapes resembling books. I did this because I grew up seeing my mom reading books a lot. Also, since my mom grew up on an island and is like the sea, vast and deep in wisdom, I drew waves. And I patterned the camellia, which is part of the name of the daycare she runs, into the design.

The restaurant I chose for my food truck design project is Din Tai Fung. Din Tai Fung is a Taiwanese restaurant that specializes in various dumplings as well as noodles and rice dishes. While Mexican and Thai food trucks are commonly seen, Asian food trucks are rare in Seattle. Dumplings require a certain amount of time to be prepared, which may lead to lower turnover rates when sold from a food truck. However, observing examples like Din Tai Fung, which operates at sports stadiums, made me believe that adapting it into a food truck is feasible. Asian food may be unfamiliar to some people, so I decided to use actual photos of the food in designing the food truck, as mere drawings or menu names might not be easily understood. Inspired by Din Tai Fung’s logo colors of red and the color of the steamer baskets used for dumplings, I used these two colors as the main theme, adjusting only the transparency.
Additionally, I strategically placed chopstick images and illustrations to represent Asian culinary culture.

The Din Tai Fung logo was placed in three places on the front and both sides of the truck, regardless of whether the truck was moving or stopped. In particular, the logo was simply placed on the front so that the car in front could see it through the rear-view mirror, especially when the truck was moving. A large logo with an image of chopsticks was placed on the driver’s seat to create a more impactful promotional effect. Lastly, pictures of Din Tai Fung’s six popular menu items were attached to the right side of the truck, where the passenger seat is located, to help customers visually understand the menu. When ordering, customers can refer to the menu images to place their orders, and for those waiting, providing information through images enables them to be ready to order as soon as their turn comes.

Through the collaboration project, we learned the importance of consideration and decisiveness. Working with randomly selected team members and a given topic, we experienced cooperation with people from different fields. In this process, we learned how to reconcile our opinions and work towards a common goal.

Our team consisted of two graphic design students and one visual media student. To start the assignment, we spent time combining words written on three sticky notes to create a story. Based on our individual experiences and thoughts, we imagined scenarios and shared opinions on how we could use them as elements for our video and what message we wanted to convey.

During this process, our team members responded openly to each other’s opinions, enriching the story. Once the story was crafted, we sought approval from our professor through a consultation. After approval, things progressed quickly. Ty summarized the entire process in a document, outlining the topic of the assignment before detailing the plan. David and I shared ideas for location scouting and props needed for filming, marking up specific images for the video.

David, who was particularly interested in storytelling, fleshed out our confirmed story into a storyboard. Meanwhile, I focused intensively on creating illustrations for the props used in filming. Conveniently, our video backdrop was a café, and since we had previously worked on a café brochure project, we were able to redesign existing images to fit our video, saving time.

The location we used for filming was a rented space with a designated time frame, so we had to finish shooting within a limited time. As soon as Ty and I arrived at the shooting location with the props we had prepared, we set up the shooting studio. David installed the camera according to the shooting plan and made multiple attempts to capture us from various angles.

One challenging situation during the shoot was discovering that the audio wasn’t properly recorded in several scenes when we had almost finished shooting according to the scenario. Upon this discovery, we immediately proceeded to reshoot the scenes where the audio was not captured correctly. Ultimately, we were able to complete the filming of our prepared scenario within the rented time frame.

Even after the filming was completed, we worked together to tidy up the shooting location and continued to communicate while sharing the next steps. Although we couldn’t share much about what we learned during the filming on the day of the presentation due to time constraints, we were able to create a satisfying project outcome—a video that brought smiles to people’s faces as we intended.

We are grateful to the professor who provided us with the opportunity to learn collaboration through this creative project.

I have selected Seattle Union Gospel Mission as the organization to donate to. When I immigrated to the United States and started living in Seattle, the issue that made the strongest impression on me was the homelessness problem. Seeing many people left on the streets before understanding the deeper circumstances behind them, my initial reaction was fear. However, there was an incident that changed my perception.

To adapt to life here, I started working part-time at a flower shop. There, I met a colleague who seemed a bit different but diligently took on tasks that others avoided. One day, I saw him pause for a few minutes in a strange posture, apparently intoxicated. When I shared the situation with another coworker, I learned that he was homeless and sometimes appeared intoxicated. The drug and homelessness issues in the U.S. were very different from what I was used to in my home country, and facing them was shocking. However, prioritizing the idea of him as my colleague rather than focusing solely on his homelessness, I became curious about his past.

He was born into a wealthy family and ran his own business until his thirties. Then, through a friend, he got involved with drugs, leading to addiction and the loss of everything. While I felt saddened, I couldn’t shake the thought that everyone faces moments of choice, and perhaps he simply didn’t make the right ones at that crucial moment.

Feeling uncomfortable at times when he couldn’t focus due to intoxication, I confided in another coworker, who informed me that he was currently trying to recover from addiction. Hearing this made me feel ashamed of my previous thoughts because despite being homeless, my colleague was making efforts to rebuild his life, while I had judged him based solely on the aspect of addiction.

This experience led me to rethink encounters with homeless individuals on the streets. Instead of feeling scared, I began to wonder about the stories behind their circumstances and how heartbreaking it must be for them to resort to begging. Additionally, I questioned whether I had been proactive in extending a helping hand to the homeless individuals I encountered. Therefore, on the day I heard a sermon about homelessness at the church I attend, I bought extra sandwiches and water while grocery shopping and offered them to a homeless person begging outside the store. However, the response I received was a request for money, not food. That experience was a surprise to me.However, realizing that my perception of how to help may differ from what they actually need, I became aware of organizations serving the homeless, and I discovered a group called UGM. Their statement that all help begins with dignity resonated with me deeply. This organization does not simply provide food and necessities to the homeless, but the opportunity to make drastic changes in their lives and the resources to do so. In fact, many of the staff members of the organization shared experiences of how they used to be in the very encampments that they would visit before they received support through UGM.

So, if I were in a position to donate $25,000, I would choose to donate to this organization. I believe what they need is assistance in providing the strength to get back up again from the very spot they’ve stumbled.

https://www.ugm.org

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• Apple (https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/)
• Adobe (https://spectrum.adobe.com)
• The Guardian (https://design.theguardian.com)

“I have chosen three companies based on the items, programs, and interests I use in my daily life. While previously I only thought from the perspective of a user, now that I have learned a lot through graphic design programs, I can focus a bit more on the elements of design.

After briefly examining the design systems of the three companies listed above, here’s what I’ve learned:

First, each company has a systematic grid system. They have grids tailored to different devices, arranging images and headline patterns to fit each screen size.

Second, they have own color palettes according to their themes. Particularly on news websites, I learned that color palettes are an important part of the design system, as inserting thin color borders helps distinguish the issue before even grasping the headline.

Finally, I learned about motion. “The complexity of moving elements, considering their duration, and the timing of setting the scale of motion are also important aspects of the design system.”

My favorite thumbnail is ‘BOLD’