Donald Trump's rallies draw thousands of devoted followers who wait hours to see him speak, creating an almost religious fervor among his base. This cult-like devotion inspired me to design a poster depicting him as a false idol.
My poster depicting Vladimir Putin as a false idol won a Gold Award in the Graphis Poster 2024 Awards. Created in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the design features a golden bust of Putin against a red backdrop with "FALSE" written in both Russian and English. The poster was printed and displayed in Kyiv, and a limited-edition screen print raised funds for Ukrainian humanitarian aid.
After NPR's Mara Liasson commented on minority rule in the United States, I wanted to investigate the numbers behind Supreme Court appointments. What I found about presidential popular votes and Senate confirmations was striking enough that I needed to visualize it.
I was feeling emotionally off today and I wasn’t quite sure until I realized that the events of January 6, 2021 deeply affected me as a patriotic American. At the time, I thought it was the culmination—the last act of a power-hungry, extremist wing of our country. Donald Trump and his deliberate peddlers of lies and misinformation had incubated and unleashed this insurrectionist mob against the Capitol, against the United States. But I was wrong.
When Christopher Simmons called for artwork supporting the Biden-Harris campaign, what started as a single contribution evolved into an obsessive creative series. Through 3D typography and animated loops, I channeled my hopes for democracy into Instagram-ready animations designed to catch eyes and change minds.
In times of political and social upheaval, protest art emerges as a powerful voice of resistance. From Design Is Play's anti-Trump posters to Hong Kong's protest art and Shepard Fairey's "We the People" series, I explore how modern agitprop channels frustration into compelling visual statements against authoritarianism and injustice.
As a design student in the 1990s, I never questioned why all our celebrated design heroes were white men. Today, with Black designers making up only 3% of the industry, it's time to examine how we teach design history and create meaningful representation in our field.
In the wake of Twitter finally fact-checking Trump's tweets and growing protests over George Floyd's murder, tech companies are being forced to confront their role in enabling harmful content. As designers, we're not just passive observers in this system - we help shape the digital world that billions of people interact with every day.
We’ve reached the point where schools are selling bulletproof backpack panels to protect kids from mass shootings. This is the NRA’s endgame: guns everywhere, from classrooms to churches to bars, with no meaningful gun control. Meanwhile, gun ownership is declining, but 69% of us live in fear of gun violence, thanks to a vocal minority holding our politics hostage. Bulletproof gear shouldn’t be a back-to-school essential, yet here we are.
Yesterday, my Facebook filled with “Me too” posts—stark reminders of pervasive harassment. Later, I heard the harrowing story of a Rohingya survivor, exposing humanity’s capacity for cruelty. Despite millennia of evolution, our primal instincts—aggression, territorialism, tribalism—still pull us back. But progress depends on resisting them and building a future of empathy and cooperation. We must do better. Together.