Parsons School of Design
BFA Communication Design
Thesis 2022

My thesis is an exploration of the connections between design and music, subculture, and community. As a producer and DJ, underground techno and the electronic music scene has been fundamental to my experience in New York City. Over the past two years, the scene has changed. It has risen out of the countercultural space into the mainstream, becoming more commodified and less communal. This has also led to a demographic change in what was once a queer and Black community, with those members being pushed out either by inaccessibility of tickets or unsafe venues. To confront this issue, I asked how design could be used to differentiate my identity as a musical artist within this newly commodified community, while also creating a system to protect the original core group.

I used my musical alias, Sheba, and the minimal aesthetics of early house and techno music. Some visual choices were made based on words I associate with Sheba: mystic, sexual, anonymous, androgynous. The identity system uses methods that encourage an “in crowd” and an “out crowd,” and entry points where members of the out crowd can be let in. The Sheba persona had to be kept consistent throughout the system as well. The result is a collection of printed materials, digital graphics, and letterforms that explore different ways Sheba can interact with the audience, through either coded language or sharing artifacts of the music.

This projects aims to encourage methods of resistance to the homogenization and commodification of (counter-)cultures in the coming years. Through Sheba, I suggest that one of these methods is the creation of anonymous personas and coded graphics.

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