Today we’d like to introduce you to Tiffany Lo.
Hi Tiffany, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born and raised in Taipei, the capital city of Taiwan. It is a growing, thriving city with a 24-hour non-sleep lifestyle. Currently, though, I am pursuing my Master of Fine Art degree at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and expected to graduate in June 2023. This isn’t the path I expected myself to be taking, but to see how I got here, we have to tune back to my childhood.
I was always interested in doodling, drawing short comics, and collaging in my diary throughout my teenage years, as many artistic people would do. However, as much as my parents are very open-minded, they are also very realistic. As a result, when it came to education, art and design were never on my list of study.
Though my parents expected me to follow their path to become a pharmacist, I decided to not follow their plan and form my own. I want to learn how the world works instead of being holed up in a cubicle to deliver medicine to people (that was a very narrow-minded stereotype I had in my high school brain), so instead, I decided to major in Economics in college and went to Liechtenstein in Europe to study for a year. That one year of exchange in Europe made me more interested in how global economics works. Thus, after graduation, I aimed to build a career that could either communicate with people globally or let me travel around the world. I was lucky to find a position in a seafood international trading company and met my previous manager, Susan Yen, who tutored me on building client/supplier relationships and gave me the opportunity to work on company presentation deck design, workflow process design, and client package design when she realized my interest in doodling and using graphics and tables to demonstrate abstract concepts.
It was the package design project that made me dig and research into design more. The more I dug, the more interested I was in design. The sense of achievement I felt seeing my design actually had a function and created value to the client means a lot to me. Eager to learn more, I found a computer learning center in Taipei called EC Design and started learning the Adobe suite and Cinema4D there. Through this, I discovered a field of design called motion media, a discipline that applies different levels of branding concepts and strategies to create media works. This is when I had an “aha-moment”,–what if I could bridge my previous experience working in the business field, and utilize that knowledge to make a brand look and feel better? To be more attached to their client? This is how I started gathering information and became a SCAD student.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I felt like “smooth” is actually depending on how I interpret it. Accomplishments and friendship wise, it is beyond my expectation. Thinking of being nominated for several awards has been beyond my expectation, and getting hands-on experience through an internship in Summer has expanded my industry knowledge tremendously.
However, emotionally, it wasn’t very smooth. Changing a career path to most people is always challenging and risky, not to mention moving to a new country at the same time. Though I always view myself as a fearless person and a go-getter, those inner doubts still intimidate me from time to time. Especially when I was comparing myself to my peers and other established designers. The fear of not being able to deliver awesome work all the time has stranded me.
Luckily, I’m in a very supportive environment. My classmates, professors, and friends encourage and inspire me all the time. My roommate Sara introduced me to yoga and that helped me to re-focus on the present, not the future or the past. Channeling those negative thoughts to a drive and energy to work on projects helped me to progress and grow as a designer.
Having said that, I would like to publicly thank all of the professors from our major, but with a special shoutout to Professor Minho Shin, and Professor Dominique Elliot. For they relentlessly encourage me to make better work and give critiques to open up my eyes with their professions, caring personality, and enthusiasm in education.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My strength has always been communication and applying different styles to fit the client’s needs.
However, I especially like utilizing narratives to tell intriguing stories. In all my works, I always try to incorporate metaphors in my narrations. One of my works during my study at SCAD that got nominated for Motionagrapher, Rookies awards, and the Young One’s Art Director Club in 2022 was a ‘Suicide Prevention Promotion’ made from a heartbreaking experience of losing my cousin during the pandemic.
In the beginning of my study, I mainly focused on 2D illustrative motion because that is my comfort zone. However, the more I learned motion graphics, the more I found the limitation of an illustrative style. I started to incorporate different treatments to my design, including typography, 3D, graphic design layout, and abstract forms throughout the study at SCAD. I’m proud to say that I am able to build my own body of work with such a variety in 2 years of study.
Another aspect I love to do is organizing and communicating. Through multiple collaborative experiences in SCAD, I learned the nuances and culture to communicate here. For example, people here tend to be very to the point but still polite, while in Taiwan, we are more familiar with using implications to convey the message in order to be polite.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I’ve always been interested in foreign languages since I was young. My initial intention of learning languages is never for grades, but for pure curiosity for the things unfamiliar to me. I remembered when all the other kids were watching Taiwanese drama, I was watching sitcoms, cartoons, and reality shows from the United States and listening to English songs from the radio. I remembered those days when I heard unfamiliar words in an English song, guessed how the words are spelled and then checked them up in the dictionary.
Though Mandarin is my native language, I’m always surrounded by languages and designs from different cultures. Perhaps due to the fact that Taiwan is an island surrounded by Japan, Korea, South East Asia, and China, we are always surrounded by media and cultures from other countries. I felt like this immersion into different cultures has made all artists and designers from Taiwan very unique. Since our works will always reflect cultures around us, and from the culture within ourselves.
These interests in American pop culture have helped me unexpectedly when I interned at SidLee last Summer and Fall as a motion intern with their entertainment social team. As a designer, it is essential to know what feelings and experiences a show or a game wants to portray to their audience when they market themselves to the public. With the knowledge built up from what I’ve consumed in the past, it was easier for me to grasp the tone of each brand here.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://motifflo.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/motifflo/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/motifflo/
Image Credits
Mari Bliss (for Headshot)
