Credits
Role: Designer
Did: Identity System & Spatial Activation

Spatial: Thea Kim, Faith Kim, Tonia Zhang, Hailey Lee, Ritu Mantri
Publication: Clara Cayosa, Kevin Tomas
Motion: Joy Zou, Hamin Seo
Web: Lucy Pham, Tina Zhou, Annabel Gillespie
Curation: Avrie Allen, Brooke Shary, Luisa Heindl

Spatializing a Typographic System

¹For Reference Only was the collectively selected title for the 2025 RISD Graphic Design MFA Biennial, chosen through a cohort-wide proposal and voting process. The exhibition examines the afterlife of design work—what is consumed at surface level, what is archived, and what dissolves into context.

The identity translates this question into visual form through density and accumulation. Information is layered and compacted, requiring close reading to fully access the exhibition details. Legibility operates on multiple distances: from afar, the system reads as texture; up close, it reveals structure.

My primary contribution focused on expanding the identity into physical space. I proposed a restrained black-and-white typographic system activated through large-scale wildposting across campus. By layering posters in unconventional architectural corners, overlapping sheets, and allowing them to accumulate organically, the installation produced a kinetic typographic effect in real space.

In collaboration with Thea Kim, I also designed and produced the exhibition’s index wall—a large-scale catalog of works positioned at the gallery entrance. The overwhelming density of listings reinforces the show’s central premise: how design risks dilution as it circulates, accumulates, and disappears within contemporary visual culture.