Graphic Arts
ILLUSTRATION | TYPOGRAPHY | LOGOS | POSTERS | MISC.
Handlettering - The Tiananmen Mothers
Process: Pen on paper, scanned, then colored digitally.
Concept: Chapter titles for the multimedia project "A Mother's Love: A Tribute to the Courage and Compassion of the Tiananmen Mothers." Many mothers of the student activists killed by government troops in the Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing, 1989 are still fighting against state-sanctioned suppression of memory.
Banner & logo - EMW digital publications
Process: Digital (Photoshop).
Concept: Graphics for branding. Founded the online multimedia publication Borderlands with Boston's beloved arts+tech+community space EMW Bookstore that focuses on amplifying the voices and visions of marginalized artists, storytellers and thinkers.
Posters - Tomato and Eggs film 2017
Process: Stylized Shaina Lu's digital painting into a poster (left) / Stylized photo into poster (right)
Concept: The film Tomato & Eggs follows the unraveling of many family secrets after a young Chinese American woman tells her single father that she wishes to marry her girlfriend of six years.
Posters - Human Rights Week 2012
Process: Photos stylized on Photoshop (Made at age 16)
Concept: "You don't have to be super to be a hero" was a poster campaign featuring students and teachers at Northwood High for the annual Human Rights Week, during which over one thousand students participate in lectures, discussions and screenings on interfaith dialogue, LGBTQ rights, human trafficking and more. As President of the NHS Amnesty International chapter, I organized the week as well as the poster campaign.
Posters - Human Rights Week 2011
Process: Photographs stylized on Photoshop (Made at age 15)
Concept: "Got rights?" features students at Northwood High. Instead of a milk mustache, we covered the mouth with duct tape; instead of "Got milk?" we asked, "Got rights?" During the annual NHS Human Rights Week, over one thousand students participate in lectures, discussions and screenings on interfaith dialogue, LGBTQ rights, human trafficking and more. I organized and executed the poster campaign.
Instead of a milk mustache, duct tape. And instead of "Got milk?," we asked, "Got rights?"
Logos & avatars - Hotpot Time Machine
Process: Digital (Photoshop pen tool).
Concept: (1) "Hotpot Time Machine" is an Asian American "band" whose members love eating hotpot together and sharing memories of family and home. (2) Self-portraits.
Wall painting - "For colored girls who have considered suicide"
Process: Watercolor on wall (2012, age 17)
Concept: Based on cover art of For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, a play by Ntozake Shange.
Posters - "The America I Believe In"
Process: Themed photoshoots then stylized on Photoshop
Concept: A photoshoot with an orange jumpsuit and a fog machine for a week-long campaign: "The America I believe in would close Guantánamo Bay and end indefinite attention."
Poster - "Who will protect their rights?"
Process: Taped neon glowsticks into letters on poster board; photoshoot compiled on Photoshop
Concept: Strangers on the streets of the Castro District of San Francisco stand in solidarity with LGBTQ rights defenders around the world, including the imprisoned Noxolo Nogzawa of South Africa.
