Yumeng Tian
(her/she)
I am a graphic designer who approaches graphic design as an open form of practice. I treat making as a way of researching, observing and thinking. My work moves across text, material, publishing, print and visual installation.
I believe design practice is not only a way to express ideas, but also a process of discovering new knowledge through making, and of reconsidering the relationship between the self and the external world. My work often begins with personal experience and gradually extends into broader spatial, cultural and communicative contexts.
I Love Charing Cross and Charing Cross Loves Me
“Space is a doubt: I have constantly to mark it, to designate it, It is never mine, never given to me, I have to conquer it.”– Georges Perec (1974).
I used Glasgow Charing Cross station as a site of observation and intervention to explore the relationship between liminality, personal identity, and urban transitional space. Through posters, experimental newspapers, and public-space actions, the project investigates how personal experiences can reshape the way we see, read, and understand everyday urban spaces.
For Sale
Try To See In The Dark
This work focuses on the concept of the in-between. Through a series of visual poetry experiments, it responds to the uncertainty and liminality experienced by individuals during transitional periods across various facets of everyday life, transforming subjective sensations into perceptible visual and reading experiences.
The Folds of Everydayness
The work explores the subtle relationship between individual existence and its surrounding environment, using “folds” as a visual metaphor for a state of transition. Through poetic texts and typographic installations, it reflects on how familiar rhythms, identities and structures begin to loosen within modern everyday life, translating this uncertain in-between condition into a perceptible visual experience.
Design is Action
Design is Action focuses on Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, using posters, letterpress and screen printing to bring its statement against torture and degrading treatment into public spaces. Through public display and hands-on printmaking, the project gives the declaration a material presence, making the act of printing part of the message. It explores how posters can turn human-rights language into something visible, physical and collectively shared.
