Parsons School of Design
BFA Communication Design
Thesis 2021

Parsons School of Design
BFA Communication Design
Thesis 2021

The Chance Encounter of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella on an Operating Table
Katelyn Paik

Great surrealist thinkers have always challenged ideas of consciousness and composition through the practices of prose, thought, form and aesthetic. Working within the discipline of graphic design, I co-opted the agenda of André Breton’s 1920s Surrealist manifesto to explore these concepts through unusual juxtapositions. My process started with compiling examples of composite imagery, nonsensical objects, and I also went through a process of creating word puzzles and aimless mind maps. As these pieces began to come together—juxtaposed spatially and formally, I found myself making unexpected connections and finding overlapping meaning within these normally unrelated things. I began to realize a certain beauty in these "chance encounters"—moments of duplicity, and systems of organization.

It is said that our reality is organized along an axis of binary opposition: black/white, good/evil, highbrow/lowbrow, typography/image, form/content, and so on. The act of juxtaposition also revealed more of the strange space that lies between the categorizations through which we live and orbit. In response to these concepts, I have curated and juxtaposed various surrealist works with the composite experimentations I conducted. I also incorporated a pictographic typeface I made that overlaps mundane objects with the alphabet, creating a glitch-like experience in the text. Through these outcomes, I aim to deconstruct these polarities and perhaps find something interesting, perhaps even humorous, in the grey areas between them.

(Red)

Dotun Abeshinbioke

Darina Abuzarova

Sung Hyun (Julie) Ahn

Anisa Al Raisi

Hazal Aysel

Vivek Bajaj

Sunayana Bali

Elliot Bohlen

Madison Brang

Allison Bynum

Rachel Chang

Lilliana Checo

Jizheng Chen

Lena Chen

Mi Chen

Raghav Chhabra

Shreya Chittaranjan

Christopher Chu

Shenny Chuang

Calen Chung

Mae Craford

Chengcheng Cui

Rebecca D'Agostino

Dani de los Santos

Nika Diomidovskaia

Aira Dolfo

Maya Eapen

Yaron Erkin

Louis Falisse

Xiaoke Fei

Bernadette Figueroa

Shih-Ju Fu

Ana Furtado

Martina Gallo

Chenxi (Lisa) Gao

Sierra Glicker

Danielle Beatriz Go

Danni Gomez

QingYing (Mimi) Guan

Peiru Guo

Siyu Hang

Trudy Hoang

Will Howell

Annie Hua

Wallis Huang

Charis Huling

Sana Jamali

Aeva Karlsrud

Lake Kennedy

Byunghyun Kim

Destiny Kim

Yeji Kim

Zen Koo

Padmaja Kothari

McKayla Lankau

Hyunseung Maddie Lee

Jade Lee

Jiwoo Lee

Juna Lee

Victoria Lee

Emma Lepore

Scarlet Li

Sunny Li

Sohyunn Lim

Misty Lin

Stephanie Lin

Yu Tong Tiffany Ling

Lilian Liu

Phoebe Lo

Charlotte Lomas

Kevin Loumeau

Wen Hsin Lu

Dirm Luawo

Peiyun Luo

Youran Mao

Imani McIntosh

Rebecca Mesonjnik

Velimar Molina

Matilde Sofia Monti

Gavin Mullally

Syalsabila Karissa Munaf

Michael Mungai

Sanjana Navar

Katelyn Paik

Aileen Pan

Chanjoo Tiffany Park

Namjoon Park

Storey Pearson

Mariel Quadrino

Simran Rao

Felitasari (Tata) Rekso

Yasmin Rozmee

Rainier Salas

Julia Sams

Eva Serrano Reisner

Anvita Shah

Suditi Shah

Amal Shaheedi

Joyce Shi

Samantha Simotas

Claira Smith

Hyunji Song

Carolina Stierli de Abreu

Niharika Sundarigari

Rachael Tomaszewski

Tiffany Tong

Svasti Ujagar

Ariana Ushiki

Diana Victoreen

Yiqi Wang

Yutong Wang

Zheng Wang

Jasmine Wei

Savannah West

Summer Wojtas

Jacquelyn Wu

Ricky Xie

Connie Xu

Karrie Xu

Ellen Yang

Jacqueline Yang

Emily Yun

Monique Zeitouny Dayan

Cecilia Zhang

Cheryl Zhang

Claire Zhang