[2020-2023] ocad university

in early 2020, i applied to OCAD out of pressure to get a university degree. after barely lasting one semester at western, i thought i might have a chance at surviving art school instead. i had no idea how to make a portfolio, and dug through my laptop files to see what i could upload. anything can be art as long as you explain it, right? thankfully, later that year, i was able to officially start classes 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. i had two weeks for my unity assignment… as you can see, i didn't get very far.

i had another two weeks to make a snapchat filter, and this was during the time everyone was adding stories to their app. there was something in particular about ben awad's vscode stories that made me want to make a stories-themed filter. unexpectedly, it was trending on snapchat and has been used over 200,000 times.

christopher moorehead's intro to data visualization class was one of my favourites. 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.

as an intern, i worked on product design for enterprise software, design systems tooling, and user experience research in the finance and cybersecurity sectors. in my third-year internship at addepar, we made company themed flashcards as an offsite activity.

in my third year of school, i got to be a part of 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 in OCAD's annual graduate exhibition. my project was chosen as a medal winner, which gets awarded to one person for each program. ☺