︎


︎︎  ︎︎ ︎︎
This page gives a quick overview of Xiyu’s personal practice 2018-2020. Please contact for more details about these projects.

2018-2020

Synphony


Synphony is a dystopina device that people use to filter out any disagreement in the cross cultural communication. Future people consider it as the ultimate solution to eliminate cultural difference. I designed wordmark for it, taking inspirations from different writing systems from different language. 




Serentia


Visual system for a fictional nation, Serentia, where citizen’s mental status is fully monitored. 

After the war III, the survivors all suffer an incurable mental trauma, similar to PTSD. In Serentia, they can forget their trauma within a certain time limit. Time is the currency here. People need to work to get more time because the more time they have, the longer they can forget about the trauma. If their currency runs low, they start to suffer flashbacks.




Covid-19 

As an international student, I experienced how COVID changed my perception of my surroundings. So, I used visuals to record my feelings, reflections, and criticism during this time.





CalArts EXPO 2019 

Co-designed with Emma Berliner

This identity is designed for CalArts EXPO 2019. To echo its experimental spirit, we created a flexible system where the horizontal lines are wiping out and introducing elements. It implies the idea of “learn the rules and then break them.” 





Food Zine

Co-designed with Yuchen Liu

This zine aims to critique that food has been used as a symbol to classify people into different social groups. We imagine, in the future, people will start to wear food on their body to show off their wealth. This zine is designed to guide future citizens how to use “plating rules” to “dress” themselves.





Posters

Co-designed with Nadia Halle, Emma Berliner, Minjoo Cho, Huicheng Wu, Alexander Chan, Sam Jones.