JANE ZHANG


ABOUT ME

I’m a recent graduate with a BFA in Communication Design and a minor in Human-Computer Interaction from Washington University in St. Louis. In my work, I strive to explore a diverse range of narratives, perspectives, and approaches through a variety of media, and I’m particularly passionate about the intersection between physical and digital media.

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 Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and listening to Rat Boy.

Feel free to reach out with any inquiries about my work, and check out more below!

HOME / CLIENT WORK / ARCHIVE

  

SAMULNORI


I was fortunate to have created the winning design for four years of WashU Samulnori’s apparel competition, which aims to respresent the club and culture of samulnori (a form of traditional Korean percussion involving four instruments). 


YEAR 1


I used linework to connect the hangul (Korean characters), instruments, and English, while allowing colored elliptical shapes serve as the basis of the form instead of relying on contour lines to draw the silhouette. I used black, white, red, blue, and yellow, as those are the colors in the samulnori uniform.




YEAR 2


I wanted to allude to the Year of the Rabbit in this hoodie, as the Lunar New Year Festival is one of WashU Samulnori’s primary performances. Additionally, I learned that each drum is meant to represent one aspect of a rainstorm, as samulnori is a style of folk music designed to call in rain for a good harvest; thus, I incorporated each drum’s element into its portrayal. On the back, I inscribed the names of the club members inside a moon to align with the Lunar New Year theme, and set the choreographers’ name around it.




YEAR 3


I took this year as an opportunity to highlight some lesser known aspects of samulnori, which were the drumsticks and a sense of structural scale and hierarchy. I kept the drum elements as a backdrop for each instrument, but chose to focus on the form of the hands and the technique of playing instead of illustrating the drums themselves. Since the population of samulnori consists of 1–2 kkwaenggwari and jing players and a whole section of buks and janggus, I depicted the kkwaenggwari and jing at a smaller size on the front while covering the entire back area with the buk and janggu panels. I also included the names of the drums in both Korean and English to add further context to each panel.




YEAR 4


For my final year, I wanted to bring some humor into my design by calling attention to the sedentary nature of the performance. I kept the illustration style very elementary, and focused on the simplest way to communicate the performance and the instruments. I used navy to double as black and blue, and leveraged red and yellow for both the ribbons and the drum material (wood and brass, respectively).