UNDERGRADUATE THESIS · EDITORIAL + POSTER DESIGN
Immigrants
Immigrants began as my undergraduate thesis project—an exploration of immigration in the United States told through research, data, and, most importantly, personal stories.
I interviewed immigrants about their experiences of leaving home, beginning again, navigating language and culture, and building lives in a new country. Their honesty became the heart of the project.
Book Design • Research + Data • Interview-Based Storytelling • Large-Format Poster Series
Undergraduate Thesis · Selected for the Graduating Art Exhibition
THE STORIES BEHIND THE DESIGN
What stayed with me most were the stories.
The people I interviewed were remarkably genuine and transparent. They spoke about language barriers, family, sacrifice, opportunity, misunderstanding, belonging, and the strange experience of building a life somewhere new while still carrying pieces of another home with them.
As an immigrant myself, this subject was never purely academic. I wanted to examine some of the assumptions surrounding immigration in the United States and place research and statistics alongside the experiences of real people.
Rather than designing about immigrants from a distance, I wanted the project to allow immigrants to speak for themselves.
“...he repeated it louder and louder again until one of my colleagues told him and showed me later with gestures that I am not deaf...”
THE BOOK
Personal stories placed beside the larger conversation.
The final book brings together first-person interviews, individual profiles, immigration research, statistics, mapping, and editorial illustration.
Each section was designed to move between the broader conversation surrounding immigration and the very personal experience of the individual living through it.
STORIES MADE VISIBLE
Extending the stories beyond the page.
The project extended beyond the pages of the book into a series of large-format illustrated posters. Each poster was connected to an individual or story represented within the publication, translating pieces of those experiences into a visual form.
Rather than illustrating an entire interview literally, each poster focuses on one thought, observation, or cultural tension that stayed with me after the conversation.
POSTER 1
Welcoming, but still distant.
One interviewee described Americans as kind and welcoming, yet also intensely private. Even though the people around her were friendly, she noticed that she was rarely invited into their homes.
It created an unusual contradiction: she felt welcomed, but still kept at a distance.
The poster explores that tension through a doorway carrying two opposing messages—“Welcome” and “Do Not Disturb”—capturing the difference between friendliness and being truly invited in.
POSTER 2
Understanding freedom when it has once been lost.
Another interviewee, originally from Poland, spoke about one of the cultural differences that stood out to him after arriving in the United States: the way people talked about freedom.
From his perspective, many people valued freedom deeply, but had never experienced what it meant to have that freedom taken away.
The poster uses birds moving freely around the page while, beneath the torn surface, a cage has been forced open—contrasting the idea of freedom with the experience of finally regaining it.
“...but they had no idea what freedom was, as they never had it taken away...”
POSTER 3
Imagining a place before ever seeing it.
One story centered on childhood expectations of America. Before coming to the United States, she repeatedly heard how fortunate she was to be going and imagined a place where everyone was wealthy and happy.
The poster places the silhouette of a young girl on a quiet path surrounded by trees. Beneath the torn surface appears the city she imagined—towering skyscrapers reaching into the clouds.
It reflects the space between the America she constructed through other people's stories and the much more complicated reality she eventually experienced for herself.
“I envisioned a beautiful city with skyscrapers in the clouds.”
POSTER 4
A mentality shaped by more than one world.
Another interview explored identity not as a simple exchange of one culture for another, but as something that continues to change over time.
The interviewee described his mentality as a hybrid of American and Russian, explaining that which direction he leaned often depended on the situation.
St. Basil's Cathedral occupies one side of the poster while the torn surface reveals the American flag beneath it, visually joining two cultures that now exist within the same identity.
“My mentality has become a hybrid of American and Russian.”
A PROJECT I STILL CARRY WITH ME
A project about memory, perception, and belonging.
Years later, Immigrants remains one of my favorite projects I have ever created. Perhaps it is because it began with something personal. Perhaps it is because so much of the work was entrusted to me through other people's stories.
More than anything, I still believe those stories deserve to be seen and heard. The project became an opportunity to explore what can be lost when people are reduced to a category—and what becomes visible when we stop and listen to the person behind it.
I hope one day this project may have another life—and perhaps even find its way into publication.