SALON

Tuesday, Apr 10, 2012 12:00 AM UTC

Sketching an unfamiliar world

A 23-year-old designer from Hong Kong draws from pop culture and OWS in her work for Bloomberg Businessweek

By

Topics: Imprint, Design, ,

Sketching an unfamiliar world
This article originally appeared on Imprint. It's part of Print magazine's annual New Visual Artist series that profiles 20 of the most promising rising talents around the world in the fields of graphic design, advertising, illustration, digital media, photography and animation.

ImprintCareer-wise, Tracy Ma has just landed on the moon. The 23-year-old designer, born in Hong Kong and raised in Toronto, wrapped up her undergraduate studies at Canada’s York University in 2010, and for the next year and a half settled into a professional pattern that she unfondly recalls as a rut. “I was just kind of unhappy,” she says. Working at a big ad agency and helping with the redesign of a local magazine, Ma wasn’t exactly at loose ends, but the post-collegiate malaise was definitely upon her.

Age: 23
Graphic designer/art director
From: Hong Kong
Lives in: New York City
Website: http://tracyma.com/

Then, last October, she got the call. Richard Turley, creative director for Bloomberg Businessweek, had heard about Ma’s work from her friend (and fellow New Visual Artist) Drea Zlanabitnig. By an uncanny coincidence, Jennifer Daniel, the graphics director at the magazine (and NVA, class of 2009), had bought a piece of Ma’s artwork at the New York Art Book Fair. Ma says, “When Richard asked for her input, she was like, ‘Oh, her!’ ” The planets had come into alignment, and Turley summoned Ma to New York.

Reference manual for Boredom and Destraction, 2010

Illustration for Bloomberg Businessweek

Design for Boomberg Businessweek spreads, 2011

Poster for Interiors and Tony Takitani DVD packaging (self-initiated), 2010

Chart design for Toronto Life

The city is a “big rush of never-ending invention,” Ma says, “a sensation of being late to everything.” Feeling like a stranger in a strange land is not unknown to the designer (she emigrated from Hong Kong at the age of 8), and it’s an experience that has colored her work. Her pages for Bloomberg are littered with pop fragments, the magpie method of someone trying to assemble a picture of an unfamiliar world (e.g., her two-page spread on the Occupy movement, with its floating disjecta membra from Zuccotti Park). Ma says, “I think graphic design is so much about that―finding common denominators, a wink or an Easter egg, an in-joke or something.” And at least for now, Ma seems to have found a sweet spot at Bloomberg, a place on the inside for an outsider.

Menu design for Smith restaurant, 2010

Menu design for Smith restaurant, 2010

Menu design for Smith restaurant, 2010


See the other 2012 NVA winners:

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.

Salon is proud to feature content from Imprint, the fastest-growing design community on the web. Brought to you by Print magazine, America’s oldest and most trusted design voice, Imprint features some of the biggest names in the industry covering visual culture from every angle. Imprint advances and expands the design conversation, providing fresh daily content to the community (and now to salon.com!), sparking conversation, competition, criticism, and passion among its members.

More Ian Volner.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from Imprint, the fastest-growing design community on the web. Brought to you by Print magazine, America's oldest and most trusted design voice, Imprint features some of the biggest names in the industry covering visual culture from every angle. Imprint

advances and expands the design conversation, providing fresh daily content to the community (and now to salon.com!), sparking conversation, competition, criticism, and passion among its members.

Continue Reading

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
225 points226 points | 8 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
165 points166 points | comment
vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
135 points136 points | 37 comments
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
51 points52 points | 8 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
26 points27 points | 1 comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations