JANE ZHANG


ABOUT ME

I’m a Communication Design major at Washington University in St. Louis who is also pursuing minors in Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Science. In my work, I strive to explore a diverse range of narratives, perspectives, and approaches. My favorite part of the design process is the iteration stage, especially the moment where I finally arrive at the version that addresses everything I’ve been trying to communicate.

Recently, I’ve been interested in the nuances of multilingual typography and how the characteristics of different languages’ letterforms can be leveraged to enhance a concept across multiple linguistic demographics. Outside of my work, I love stories in any form, whether that means books, movies, or music. Lately, I’ve been watching Summertime Rendering and listening to Jack Stauber. 

Feel free to reach out for work or friendship, and check out more of my work below!

HOME / CLIENT WORK / ARCHIVE


   

SACRED SHRINES


The objective of this project was to create a set of four icons for a theme of our choice and produce a piece of collateral to investigate how the set of icons can be applied as part of a design system. I chose to explore types of religious and spiritual gates in Asia under the theme of Architecture.




RESEARCH


I decided to focus on the torii from Japan, the paifang from China, the hongsalmun from Korea, and the torana from India as the four gates that would represent my set. I spent a long time examining the architectural characteristics of each gate and generating initial sketches, experimenting with how illustrative or abstract an icon can be as well as the degree of focus on a part or the whole of the subject I was depicting. 



As I was exploring various mark-making styles and ways to integrate cultural context, I decided to incorporate texture and symbolism by abstracting the spiritual symbols associated with each country into ink strokes. These symbols were the enso for Japan, yin and yang for China, the taegeuk for Korea, and the stupa for India. I also decided to focus on the upper left corner of each gate to emphasize their architectural details while implying a sense of the overall shape.


DEVELOPMENT


When I was digitizing the icons, I overlapped the icon on top of the brushstrokes to create a sense of depth and hierarchy and edited the stroke caps of the lines to reflect architectural structures like columns, pillars, and capitals. I added slight variations in the stroke weight as well to allude to the organic bends of Asian architecture. I also conducted several type studies to determine which typefaces would reinforce the visual language of my icons. Ultimately, I decided on Hypatia Sans Pro Bold because the subtly varied line weight was reflective of the stroke treatment in my icons. I also added the names of the gates in the native language of each gate’s country in order to reference their origins.





REFINEMENT


My refinement process consisted of resolving line weight, color balance, alignment, and points of tension in overlap to create a consistent, cohesive system. This involved adjusting details such as standardizing icon heights and stroke widths, aligning text to the same areas on each icon, and removing points where tangent lines formed.



I also created the collateral during this process, which I designed to look like a gate so that the reader could be introduced to the icons with the experience of opening the gate. This process involved locking the title, native language, and copy text to create separation between each section. I also added texture to the cover of the collateral and created a lithographic skyline of sites where the various gates are located to show the user the physical subject each icon is representing. I printed on natural paper to reinforce the traditional feel of the collateral.