Vincent Liu
Moving away from China and growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey, I had cast aside my cultural identity in an attempt to better assimilate to my environment. My household was still distinctly Chinese, but I was not proud of my culture or country. This remained the case until I made Asian American friends and joined clubs centered around Chinese students in college. These interactions touched a part of me that had remained dormant since leaving Shanghai. They triggered a fever-like obsession surrounding Chinese culture, which in turn influenced my graphic design work.
My thesis inquiry, 根 gēn (Roots), examines my motivations for caring about my culture after a long period of neglect. I draw on past personal, familial, and communal experiences through graphic language to enrich Chinese cultural awareness. This body of work focuses on injecting existing Chinese aesthetics, symbols, and vernacular into my otherwise Western designs. My projects utilize methodologies of intuitive form making and traditional Chinese approaches, which build something new rooted in the past. They take inspiration from my family customs and childhood years in China.
Roots explores the visual beauty and complexities of the Chinese language through a variety of typography-driven projects in print mediums. It aims to provide a uniquely Chinese American perspective on the celebration of culture described in the Heritage Cycle (1). In essence, Roots acts as a source through which Asian American students and designers alike can explore graphic design and Chinese culture.
- Proposed by English historian Simon Thurley, the Heritage Cycle is a heuristic model that includes four phases. By understanding the cultural heritage people value it; by valuing it they will want to care for it; by caring for it they will help people enjoy it; from enjoying comes a thirst to understand it.