Amy Truong

Art activism has historically been and still is today, more than ever, a powerful outlet for the local community of East Cesar Chavez. The art culture and atmosphere reflect and communicate what this neighborhood stands for and expresses its personality. To extend this exploration of art’s role in activism in East Cesar Chavez, I dove deeper into the art galleries and non-profit art organizations of the neighborhood, including the Resistencia Bookstore. I analyzed how their history and contributions bring different communities together for meaningful dialogue regarding social change and justice, while promoting diversity and equality in the arts. I wanted to personally start an ongoing conversation with these non-profit art galleries and organizations to understand and hear about their role in spreading the influence of art activism. Inspired from the cultural arts community, I wrote a few of my own pieces of poetry to reinforce the fierce, persistent activist spirit that has been rooted in the East Cesar Chavez neighborhood for decades.

I had heard about East Austin’s locals butting heads with the newcomers, but as I immersed myself into the East Cesar Chavez neighborhood, I questioned if I was part of the “culture vulture” epidemic. To further explore this conversation surrounding the tension between the “locals” and the “outsiders”, I chose to create imagery that focus on this clash and its consequences.

With the first GIF, I wanted to emphasize the destruction of East Austin’s newcomers coming into the neighborhood and essentially bulldozing over the “local culture” to make room for the “trendy culture” they tend to bring in.

This branding system was built up from my proposed SOURCE core logo. It is composed up of multiple pieces that represent the diverse ideas and knowledge that are explored and shared by St. Ed’s undergraduate students, coming together at SOURCE to spark new thoughts and valuable conversations amongst the community. The extension of the logo that is rearranged in layout highlights the evolution of these conversations that continue growing and changing every year, depending on how students and the world around them evolve. This proposed system uses a bold color palette to exemplify the energy and creativity surrounding the conference.

As a brand identity currently does not exist for the Boardwalk, the space needed an easily-accessible resource that could provide Austin visitors & residents the opportunity to explore all that the city has to offer, including one of its natural beauties and its friendly community. The app’s convenient features allows for easier planning, encouraging visitors to interact with space more.

For this project, I chose to focus on Japan, with four of its major modern cities spread out geographically to give potential visitors a selection of urban hubs that each have their own cultural atmospheres and contributions to Japan’s history. I decided to stick to a muted color palette to compliment the minimal graphics, paying homage to the art of Japanese minimalism. I chose to introduce the sequence of information with imagery that highlight the Japanese flag paired with stylized clouds that are suggestive of the unique cloud formations that can often be seen illustrated in Japanese patterns. The stylized cloud imagery continues throughout the piece as it translates into two of the weather icons. I chose to typeset the words in Cubano and the numbers in Golden Gate-Gothic because their wide strokes and rounded corners complimented the rounder and circular forms, while standing out by contrasting against the thin line strokes of the other graphical elements.

I was able to tackle some issues I had while accomplishing a mostly consistent rhythm to it with simple, clear, and effective graphics. However, I could have taken the opportunity to research and implement some expressions that could have made my piece stronger – especially with the weather icon animations at the end, where they felt somewhat inconsistent in their motion patterns.

Weather Report – Amy Truong from Amy Truong on Vimeo.

In designing my identity mark, my goal was that I wanted my audience to be able to look at my mark and see that the Boardwalk as a space that merges and unites the two sides of Austin together. Initially trying to combine too many concepts into one mark hindered my process of creating a simple, focused mark that visualized the core, most important concepts of my identity. I chose to focus on the W shape to abstractly point out the recreational aspect of the site by highlighting the “walk” in Boardwalk. This direction presented opportunities to adapt the mark in different contexts – for instance, if the W is repeated, it resembles a ribbon pattern that could extend and continuously weave between the three horizontal bars, highlighting the Boardwalk’s structure. The W also represented the zig-zag path of the Boardwalk and could be adapted to show illustrations of people interacting with the space.

I plan on extending my identity mark into a brand identity visualized through a mobile app. Different adaptations of the mark throughout the app will be inspired by its stylistic elements. I want to create an app that will appeal to mostly the younger demographic of Austin visitors & residents (old + new) who want the chance to explore the natural beauty of Lady Bird Lake & the East Austin community, as well as take in the view of the Downtown skyscrapers from the Boardwalk. The app would be an easily-accessible resource that could inform those on all aspects of the Boardwalk, especially as there is currently a lack of information online.

The app will include a virtual tour aspect to help visually guide visitors who may be unfamiliar with the space and all it can offer, along with additional tips on where to park, the entrances to the space, nearby eats/activities, background on the space, etc. Also, it will include a rental/booking feature in which visitors can reserve kayaks/canoes/paddleboards at nearby rental spots ahead of time to save time in line and ensure they get the best view for New Years and/or 4^th of July fireworks.

For my portfolio app, I chose to present the information and my work as a scrolling feed with thumbnails of each project, similar format to many of the social media apps used today. I chose to introduce the app with an abstract mark that represents me and one of my values – highlighting the ups and downs of any work in progress. When clicking on a project, solely the images of the particular project are displayed in a larger size, which can scroll left to right if there is more than one photo. Then the user can pull down the description window that displays the title and a short description of the project. I chose to set the type in Avenir to keep the text minimal, sleek, and easy to read.