[2020-2023] ocad university

In early 2020, I applied to OCAD in an attempt to finish my university education without taking math tests. Like most art schools, you need to submit a portfolio, so I uploaded some hastily designed hackathon apps, high school graphic design projects, middle school paintings, a couple of photos, and hoped that would be enough. Thankfully, later that fall, I began classes remotely as a second-year student.

The beginning years of the undergraduate Digital Futures program are centred around Atelier courses, where we explore a range of tools and ideas to figure out what we'd like to focus on later. How about game design? I had two weeks for my Unity assignment - that was the first and only time I used Unity.

How about augmented reality? I had another two weeks to make a Snapchat filter. This happened to coincide with the time every app was coming out with stories, so naturally I made an Instagram Stories filter for Snapchat. Unexpectedly, it was trending on Snapchat and has been used over 200,000 times.

In Christopher Moorehead's data visualization class, I was introduced to information design in the form of charts and graphs. For one of my projects, I chose to analyze and present the impact of COVID-19 on theme parks worldwide.

It wouldn't be university without balancing school, recruiting, and internships. For almost two years, I used my own time tracking method to monitor my workload.

I did a few internships in the software & design space, with some overlap during school semesters. During my third-year internship at Addepar, we made company themed flashcards as an offsite activity.

In my third year of school, I was also selected to join an urban design workshop in Paris, where ten students each from OCAD and ENSCI collaborated to explore vernacular design applications for communities on the island of St. Denis. A short film about our work was produced by Felix Marye.

A doodle, probably drawn during a graphic design history lecture, when in-person classes had resumed.

I spent most of my final year experimenting with fonts and generative models, which I shared at OCAD's annual graduate exhibition. It was one of the funnest things I've done, and on top of that, the school awards a medal winner for each program, for which my thesis project was chosen.