Parsons School of Design
BFA Communication Design
Thesis 2022

White Space
Arianne Zhang

White Space is a personal documentation of my experiences with lucid dreaming. The book is structured like a musical rhapsody, a unified piece with a free spirit featuring a spectrum of variation that is episodic yet integrated. Like a song, the value of this work is not in its ability to instruct readers, but in its ability to provide an emotional connection for others struggling with sleep disorders and mental illness.

Rooted in references to classical music, the book explores the relationship between nightmares and high-functioning depression. It introduces lucid dreaming as a metaphor for escaping rigid systems of living in the waking world. The graphics weave back and forth from beginning to end between hopeless and hopeful perspectives to create a singular vision of experiencing an ongoing waking nightmare accompanied by frequent actual nightmares. Even within this constant negative outlook on life, fleeting moments of lucidity exist.

In a sequence with relative consistency, White Space’s layout design aims to mimic the disorientation that plagues the subconscious mind by using AI to generate images of distorted figures and landscapes in combination with lyrical text written in first-person. Dichotomies of light and dark, real and fake, and freedom and captivity bounce back and forth throughout varying layouts to describe my own chaotic and contradictory thought process. It has a numerical structure as the visuals operate on multiples of two and three. Black spreads wrap the book as a state of peace.

Eesha Agrawal

Paul Ahern

Aishah S. Ahmad

Luna Alatorre

Nadia Alhejailan

Seher Anand

Maren Hannah Anscheidt

Kayla Marie Isabelle Areglado

Zeynep Atik

Vee Authari

Amaya Avila

Vlora Bajrushi

Sophia Beceiro

Ilan Belokon

Madeline Benfield

Sophia Bevacqua

Sia Bishnoi

Tarra Boroumandi

Paul Brock

Sofia Cacho Sousa

Eunice Chan

Malini Chandra

Jacey Chen

Jamie Chen

Nico Chilla

Samantha Chun

Erin Clausen-McGee

Stephanie Cui

Chenguang Deng

Claire Dong

Shaanzya Dongre

Miranda Elder

Adelai Evans

Elizabeth Fan

Nicho Ferez

Emiliano Flores

Emily Force

Logan Frances

Jen Fu

Juriel Furukawa

Chloe Gad

Camila Giraldo

Avni Goel

Jess Gooding

Amanda Guo

Ethan Halpern

Aijia Hao

Nathan Harrison-Bokor

Meini He

Ashley Heo

Olivia Hepner

Joy Hsu

Yuhan Hu

Diwen Huang

Leanne Huang

Xinyi Huang

Dakoda Hughes

Hana Jacobsen

Emma Jaeger

Zeid Jaouni

Vivian Ji

Zhiyuan Ji

Hyunji Jo

Avery Kang

Simran Kanwar

Nicole Kapper

Sarah Kendric

Ashley Kim

Kyutae Kim

Sarah Kim

Veronica Kim

Nitya Kumar

Ivy Kurniawan

Danielle Lair Ferrari

Hana Lanzkowsky

Yea Sun Lee

Yingyi Lei

Cecily Li

Weihe Li

Zimo Li

Vivian Lin

Yiwen Lin

Kai Ling Kelly Liu

Zi Yun Liu

Nora Lombardo

John Luo

Patrick Yang MacDonald

Germaine Mai

Rachael Mattison

Arman McLean

Alex Mi

Ayesha Mirza

Noyonika Nath

Staicy Ngongu

Khe Nguyen

Helen Niu

Calvin Ogden

Sonya Olomskaya

Aly Orescanin

Alina Osborn

Hyunji Park

Min Jung Park

Albert Parson

Carmen Pleitez

Emily Popovitz

Haiqingqing Qi

Amaarah Rahman

Audrey Razak

Olivia Ries

Daniela Rodriguez

Eva Roso

Erin Rusek

Elizabeth Shavrick

Disha Shetty

Freeze (Jiating) Shi

Sophie Shron

Alisa Su

Haozheng Sui

Ziyi Tang

Oriana Teitelbaum Zwerdling

Ren (Karen) Thomas

Zachary Tinubu-Karch

Brigitte Ugarte

Julia Vidal

Tia Wagh

Stephanie Wang

Zhanyi Wang

Ali Waqar

Mary Wedd

River Wildmen

Duncan Williams

Amy Wong

Jiayi (Cassie) Xu

Shuming Xu

You Xu

YoonJi Yang

Allison Yick

Yejoon Yoo

Shamail Zahir

Arianne Zhang

Victoria Zhang

Regulus Zhao

Xinyi Zhao