Work in Progress is a podcast that is interested in the ways design students talk about their thesis projects. Each episode is hosted by Karissa Munaf, a senior at Parsons School of Design. She began this project as part of her thesis project. The conversations will focus on the subject matter but particularly on the research, process, and the unforetold stories that students have throughout their thesis journeys.
Charis Forrester is a senior studying Communication Design at Parsons School of Design. For her first experiment, Charis created and branded her own indie record label called "Dirty Boots." She was inspired by Factory Records and their way of cataloging everything, so the idea she had for "Dirty Boots" was to attribute a boot to every new release. However, in her second experiment, she wanted to reach a bigger audience—something that is more relatable while still keeping her passion and love for music. So she decided to explore the cultural significance of playlists. She is creating multiple zines that consist of people's playlist submissions. Each zine has its own mood, such as joy, parties, love, anger, and pain. In this conversation, I got to learn so much about the art of creating a playlist--it is like a love language as Charis says it. I got to learn more about the type of music that she loves so much, from the history of post-punk to the bands, and lastly, I learned that there is so much power in the sharing of music that often gets overlooked.
1 Apr 2021
08. What can black aesthetics teach you about influence and inspirations?
Will Howell is a senior studying Communication Design at Parsons School of Design. For thesis, Will decided to devote his thesis project to explore more of his identity. Will is an African-American designer, so a lot of his research centers on black aesthetics in graphic design. In his first experiment, he curated a visual zine of some of the major contributing characters who make up the black design aesthetic over the past 100 years. Due to America's history of racism and poor documentation of the black existence, this zine became a point of reference for a younger version of himself. For his second experiment, he made the decision to pivot from found material to original material to try and do something he had never done before, which is to design a capsule collection. He wanted to explore what his aesthetic is like as a black designer while keeping in mind some of the key points raised in Sylvia Harris's "Searching for a Black Aesthetic in American Graphic Design" essay. The final form will be a virtual exhibition that showcases the different garments designed with a concept called "starting from zero." This was a very meaningful conversation to me since it was my first time learning so much about black aesthetics—from the origins and history to the ideology itself. I learned that the black aesthetic influences a lot of us in many different ways which I think often gets overlooked. In the end, Will taught me a lot about what it means to try new things and to be authentic in what I do.
25 Mar 2021
07. How does art open conversations about morality and laws?
Eva Serrano Reisner is a senior studying Communication Design at Parsons School of Design. Eva began her thesis journey by asking the question, "Are laws moral?" but the question felt too open, so she expanded upon this question and ended up with, "How does current American democracy prevent a true way of living under one's own morals?" She approached the question in two different ways. Her first experiment was to redesign the voting ballot, and for the final form, Eva is rewriting the laws that only contain the word "God" in the US code. The reason for this is to show the relationship between Christianity and American laws—to prove that it exists. Through this project, Eva is hoping that she could present these ideas without forcing an overly critical voice. The goal is to make people aware so that they can have their own thoughts on the matter, and allow others to take action.
18 Mar 2021
06. What does empathy in branding look like?
Danni Go is a very talented communication design student at Parsons School of Design. In this episode, we talked a little bit about her first project which was to explore the relationship between brand identity and personal identity. She created a book that consists of a survey of questions given to various brand users to investigate their personal relationships with their chosen brand. For her final project, Danni is creating her own benefit corporation that is centered on empathy called "Core Empath Corp." She is designing a brand manual for her corporation and doing case studies of multiple brands which are selected by influencers and herself. In our conversation, I got to finally ask the question I've been wanting to ask, and that is "What does designing with empathy truly mean?" So many designers have mentioned it but I never really understood it. We talked a lot about what empathy looks like—figuratively and visually—in branding, what it means to be a conscious consumer, and lastly, Danni taught me that it's okay to question what you're doing because it's all part of the process of learning and adapting to your career.
11 Mar 2021
05. What is this phenomenon called the digital space?
Felitasari Rekso, also known as Tata, is a Communication Design student at Parsons School of Design. Talking about her thesis project is a little different from the other students I've talked to. Instead of focusing on one subject, we are talking about the medium that she chose for all of her projects. Her first looks into different applications that could store photographs in the digital space and understanding why we are so obsessed with remembering specific events in our lives. Moving on to her second experiment, she redesigned what a museum archive could look like today, one that involves AR and virtual experience. Lastly, her third experiment is to study the infrastructure of Jakarta through multimedia art. So yes, ranging topics but explored through the same medium. In this ep, we'll talk a lot about the digital space, from our obsession with storing photographs online to creating design work with AR, and we realized how working on her thesis projects helped her learn more about herself as a designer and the way she works.
4 Mar 2021
04. How do we express our past family traumas through art?
Mi Chen, also known as Stella, is a Communication Design student at Parsons School of Design. Her thesis topic explores the question, "How does our traumatic experience with our family-of-origin impact our adulthood?" She approached this question in two different ways. First, she did a short film consists of video interviews with Chinese students and asked them about their past family traumas. Second, she designed a virtual exhibition showcasing different traumatic experiences that happened in multiple places in her house. Each traumatic experience is expressed through a form of digital art. In this episode, we talked about how to express our deepest and darkest emotions through art, which is something I have never done before, and how creating art or films can give us some sort of closure.
25 Feb 2021
03. What do Wikipedia edit wars say about the production of knowledge?
Cecilia Zhang is a Communication Design student at Parsons School of Design. She and I would often have these weekly thesis talks to talk about our own work. Recording our conversation for this episode felt a lot like our usual talk. In this episode, we talked about how Cecilia is looking into Wikipedia edit wars. Although they show this hostile side of Wikipedia, edit wars speak to the passion that editors have when they write. Her thesis is a critique on Wikipedia. I think we are often told that Wikipedia is an unreliable source because anyone can write it. But later I learned that there are a lot of factors that play into writing and publishing a Wikipedia page, and writing a good page is really not as easy as you think.
25 Feb 2021
02. What is it like to live a mixed-culture life in America?
Dirm Luawo is currently a senior at Parsons School of Design. He is also a mentor for the Parsons Scholars Program which he used to be a past student. Dirm has been in the Parsons community for almost six years now and that brings me back to the first time I met him five years ago at the Parsons Summer Program. He was the first Indonesian-American I met in New York and so it was a really interesting and insightful talk about the life of a mixed-culture kid living in America and how that had shaped his thesis project. Talking to Dirm also taught me how a thesis project can be a self-critique of our identities.
18 Feb 2021
01. Why are people so lonely in cities?
Alisa Nurmansyah is a recent graduate from New York University. She has a double major in Economics and Urban Design and Architecture. Alisa currently interns at the Greenwich Village Chelsea Chamber of Commerce and has interned at NYC's Department of Parks and Recreation. Yes, super active. That's why I often call her parks lady or Leslie Knope, but—of course—there are so many other things she's interested in beyond parks. In this episode, we talked about how design can create solutions to our loneliness at public spaces and school campuses, but mostly we chatted about how lonely people are in cities.
17 Feb 2021
00. Introduction
A thesis project about other people's thesis projects. woah, META. Anyways, the introduction episode is about getting to know who I am, what this podcast is about, why I'm making this, and what I hope to achieve from the conversations. Sit back, relax, and I hope you enjoy listening to Work in Progress.
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