Print — Yinchen Niu

Brochure design for the Culver Hotel.

Tools: Adobe Indesign

Platform: Hotel

Role: Printed Collateral; Brand Marketing

Time: 2019—2020

I designed a quad-fold brochure for the historic Culver Hotel. It highlights the historical background and cultural significance of the hotel throughout the decades. The photography and vintage illustrations works together with the hotel’s brand. It is to be used for the visitors of the hotel who are interested to know more of the local landcapes of the Culver City.

Design of the Culver Hotel’s Wedding Packages

Tools: Adobe Indesign

Platform: Hotel

Role: Printed Collateral; Brand Marketing

I redesigned the quad-fold (eight pages) brochure for the Culver Hotel. It highlights the historical background and cultural significance of the hotel throughout the decades. The photography and vintage illustrations works together with the hotel’s brand. It is to be used for the visitors of the hotel who are interested to know more of the local landcapes of the Culver City.

Design for the LA Contemporary Exhibition (LACE)’s Summer Event Calendar

Tools: Adobe Indesign

Platform: Art Galleries Marketing

Role: Printed Collateral; Brochures

Time: 2018

While I was working at the LA Contemporary Exhibitions, I was assigned to create a quad-fold poster / brochure for the gallery. I collected archival photographs and used graphics to highlight the artists’ works and contextual information. The brochure is to be handed to visitors who can know more of the programs.

Design for the Production Catalog and Look Book for jewelry company King Baby Studios

Tools: InDesign; Photoshop

Platform: Retail; Marketing

Role: Print Production; Books

Time: 2018—2019

While I was working as the design coordinator at King Baby Studios, a jewelry design company, I designed the layouts and photography as well as type placements for their print production collaterals. The production catalog highlights the new product line “Pop Top Collection” and the seasonal look book presents how each piece jewelry look together as different sets.

Choosing the products.

The catalog presents the products in an order usually from rings, bracelets, necklaces and to earrings. But I had a lot of artist liberty to decide which are the best pieces to set forward or as the opening page for a customer. The parings of jewelry pieces create various fashion scenarios.

Editing the photos.

We decided to arrange the close up shots first and in the order that the hues of photos transitions from cold to warm, just like how the season changes.

Book Design for film, Platoon

Tools: Adobe Indesign

Platform: Print

Role: Editorial; Books

Time: 2017

I created the project to narrate the film Platoon with original scripts written by Oliver Stone. The idea was to use design treatments to iterate how the story paces.

Typographic treatment.

I used vector lines to highlight conversations and with typographic treatments to set certain lines apart as the story goes.

Photography selection.

I picked moments from the film that I think are the most iconic ones; I also arrange them on the pages that go cohesively with the spreads before and after.

Writing and Designing Fiction “Survive Spoofland”

I came up with the idea of writing a design fiction during the last year for my thesis at Cal Arts. And I decided to write a dystopian novel where everyone is confined by five machines their entire lives and these machines dictate each persons’ major emotional responses.

I named the protagonist “Futura”, mainly because one, I like the typeface and secondly I wanted to play a pun on the fact that the fiction sets up in a future universe. I started ready Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and the novel inspired my ideas for Spoofland.

In Infinite Jest people take edible information in the form of pills that improve yet also incapacitate people’s lives in ways that they become too reliant. And I wanted to make a spin on that idea, only in Spoofland, it is emotions that become commodities.

I created a small “realistic” manual to accompany the novel with illustrations of each machines.

I took the photos during train trips in Los Angeles.

Design for “Diving & Monsters”

This was one of my favorite projects while at Cal Arts. We were given an assignment to collect as much information possible of one topic that has happened in real life; then we got to choose the second fictional topic and found our own way to connect the two together. In the end we presented it in editorial format.

I picked mine as deep sea diving and monsters in iconic films. I found it amazing the idea of how one becomes a giant in the world of sea creatures; also the early diving suits were ginormous too. So I expanded on that contrast and made connections with films about aliens and mythical creatures, eg., Blade Runner, Fantastic Planet (La Planète sauvage) and the mythical Minotaur.

Series of Silkscreen Posters

Tools: Silkscreen printing

Platform: Print Production

Role: Posters

Time: 2017—2018

During my time at California Institute of the Arts, I collaborated with peers across departments and have produced series of silk-screen printed posters. They are mostly for visiting designers and artists series happening every other Thursday on Cal Arts campus.

I enjoyed the process of silk-screen printing as it makes each piece of work distinct. And also because of the hand-made nature of the end product, each poster has a unique texture and identity that set them apart from the digital format prints. The result of the silk screen is an art of itself.