Victor Guan, assistant art director at The New Yorker, discusses imbuing Chinese American lifestyles, traditions, and meanings into his design practice, and the art of documenting memory.
By Enzo Nguyen
APR 19, 2024
I met with designer and assistant art director at The New Yorker Victor Guan over Zoom to talk about his work and practice—how it came to be, how his background intertwines with his design practice, what he’s severed himself from to get to where he is now, and the lessons he has accumulated along the way.
I first encountered Guan’s work through his zine Home is where our things are (2023), and it led me to discover his larger—and ongoing—cultural practice titled Red Pocket, a personal series of Guan’s that serves to “imbue objects with [his] cultural experiences.”
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Enzo Nguyen: For other Asian American and Pacific Islander graphic designers, what is one piece of media that you would recommend exploring as a site of inspiration?
Victor Guan: From my previous experience as a designer who wants to work in this AAPI culture, a lot of it comes from diving into the culture first before you understand what you’re designing for. It’s small things like thinking about how there’s this rice noodle cart in Manhattan (Chinatown) that’s been there since I was a little kid. The fact that it’s still survived for over 20 years in the same spot—and if anything, it got more popular—is really interesting to me. Or even how my parents behave—they have all these unexplained traditions that they do—but I think a lot of it is just being able to observe and highlight that personal experience that isn’t really otherwise shown through other sources because I feel like it’s a second generation—I wouldn’t say responsibility—but maybe a privilege where we’re able to understand the traditions of our past generations, and figure out what that means for us.
EN: How would you describe your work and practice to people who haven’t seen it?
VG: I say my work is the documentation of my cultural experiences, relative to being a Chinese American… I’m kind of taking my own ideas and executing them with my practice, essentially, where I’m taking these very specific observations and traditions that my parents do [and] my grandparents do that are specific to me, but also, clearly, [are] relatable to a wider audience, and just finding ways to use design to showcase that in a more unique way. It’s taking all these details and using graphic design to express those forms without explicitly having to say exactly what it is—what it can mean to be Asian American when they themselves may not be, or may not relate to that, or not know about it. I just hope they get a sense of what it means that’s more than just stereotypes.
EN: I love what you said, because with stereotypes, it’s really easy to write off things that we do, how we belong, how we act, and stuff like that as “Oh, it’s just like [an] Asian American thing,” or “It’s an Asian parents thing.” But I think, the way you’re using design, if I’m understanding right, is showing it in a way, or containing it in a way that can be very softly understood.
VG: Right, it’s very implicit. I think part of the reason it’s so hard to explain Asian American culture also is because [for] a lot of immigrant parents, it’s very hard for them to explain it themselves because one: there’s a language barrier, and two: a lot of them didn’t have the privilege of a cultural education growing up. So sometimes even when I ask my parents about certain traditions that they do, they don’t even fully understand it. And that’s what makes me interested in doing the research of how I can try to figure it out and kind of explain their behaviors for them.
EN: I’m interested in understanding what led you into graphic design when you first started your undergraduate education.
VG: Similar to a lot of Asian American families, in high school I was very much a pre-med student and planning to go to college, if not to be a doctor, [then] to study economics or be some sort of engineer. It wasn’t until my first two years of college, where I think because I was in a different place away from my parents where I was able to explore other topics outside of the things I thought I had to do. I actually studied architecture for most of my time until, literally, the second semester of my senior year, I made the switch to visual arts.
With graphic design and with art in general, I think I’m a more conceptual and fast-paced thinker, so graphic design felt like the quickest way to be able to explore my ideas versus the pace of architecture… The more [design] classes I took, the more I learned about [design]. It was similar to architecture, [and] realizing that graphic design also has a lot of history and sophistication and conceptual thinking behind it that makes it much more fulfilling than producing something that looks nice.
EN: Looking back, how has your time in your undergrad intertwined with or [is] severed from your practice now?
VG: The parts that I think, at Princeton, [have] severed my practice was definitely my fear of introducing culture into my practice. Because I think in school—especially, graphic design, architecture, a lot of industries in media and creative fields—are still very Eurocentric. So even in my education, it’s very hard to feel validated when I am introducing cultures that my professors or people don’t really know about… But definitely coming out of Princeton, I’ve slowly been able to almost reclaim the parts of me that I want to show through design versus trying to fit into a very specific mold.
EN: That’s something I definitely face as well in my education, [which has centered] Eurocentric modernism… as a foundation. I feel [that] when I try to stray away from that very constructed mold, I get pushback.
VG: There’s so much more to explore in that. And it’s not like I blame my professors or anything because it is very accurate to how the industry is and… even working at The New Yorker, I realize how naive, sometimes, my Asian American knowledge can be.
EN: I saw on your website that you worked on The New Yorker‘s first Lunar New Year Edition, which I thought was very beautiful. What did it mean to bring your culture and your personal practices to the workplace? And how [would] you say your identity and cultural background impacts your creative process at The New Yorker?
VG: Of course, a lot of it was seeing my own work published in The New Yorker, but also the fact that it was the very first Lunar New Year spot series to be published in the magazine, which is kind of crazy granted [The New Yorker] is 99 years old… And realizing that I can pitch these ideas that are more related to my own culture and use The New Yorker to expose more Asian American lifestyles, traditions, and meanings into a magazine [with] such high impact. And also just trying to diversify because of the timing and how the magazine [was] raised, it’s still very—or once was and still kind of is—catered to a white, sophisticated elite within New York… But that leads into why I started Red Pocket.
EN: On your website, you describe Red Pocket as a personal practice, imbuing objects with [your] own cultural experience. I’m interested [in hearing you] parse this statement to our readers. What is this act of imbuing, and what cultural experiences do you draw from?
VG: It sprouted from how isolated I felt my design work was from my personal interests… And so Red Pocket was a way to try to isolate, research, and to explain for myself and for others: What makes me Asian, and how does that affect my upbringing and my culture and my life?
It’s wild for me to think about, because my parents are from Southern China and they grew up as farmers in villages—of course, there’s going to be such a wide gap of knowledge from them versus where I am now. And I’m using Red Pocket as a way to try to create projects that understand that gap or fill that gap in more subtle ways. One of my observations that I’ve been documenting is how my mom dries her herbs in the house. And it’s funny because it’s like she would just use the side of an Ikea stool and put a band of dried jujubes on there for the sun… Things like that, where all these subtle traditions [for which]they say, “Oh, we just do this because we do this like this [and] this is good, this is bad.” But by understanding and doing my own research on why that is actually the case, I have a more open-ended perspective about their culture and how it affects me.
EN: I would love to talk more about Home is where things are because I think that [piece] is a great example of dealing with nostalgia, a memory as a really sentimental form of [itself]. What were the lessons and experience leading up to the final zine?
VG: Well, it all started because, last year China finally opened its doors to foreigners after being on lockdown. Last year was the first time I went back in seven years… [and] it was also my first time seeing China as an adult, also as an artist, too…What was most interesting to me was that I was still able to see my grandparents house in China—which is this really old, rundown building—and seeing the history of my parents: old photos and their old houses and realizing how different their lives truly were and [realizing] the importance of documenting that because that’s the stuff that’s going to die away in a few generations.
So I took a lot of photos everywhere I went, [and] I knew I wanted to do a project of my grandparents’ apartment because… I also had a big chunk of my life there, and it’s interesting because it’s my grandparents’ apartment but it’s also meant for the whole family. And even though it’s very specific to my grandparents’ apartment, I think a lot of other Asian Americans really are in tune with it because it’s the same feeling of this hoarding of multiple generations of family and there’s this desire for them to keep these objects.
It was really funny when I asked my aunt why she still kept this old karaoke machine in our room, because they have a new one, but she just kept it because she thought it looked nice and she didn’t want to throw it away—it’s just like a vintage old steel box, basically. But, in a way, the fact that I made a zine that’s meant to be a collectible of memories is [similar to] the way they viewed the objects in the house that they refused to throw away… So I wanted just some way to express this hoarding, this willingness to hold onto things because they’re scared of letting go, and how all this is shown through the architecture and the interior design of the space—and you don’t need to say anything. There’s nothing that you really have to explain. It’s just you can tell that there’s a lot of history here.
Conclusion
This section took place over email.
EN: Do you have any words of advice for creatives early in their career?
VG: Take a holistic approach to your work. Anything can become a design project, so take inspiration from the daily observations and lessons you’re already learning about, and let them inform your designs. Follow and learn from the people and/or work that pique your interest. Design is a very generalist field, so leaning into role models that you naturally gravitate towards will help you find your own niche in the industry.
EN: What might our readers be able to look forward to seeing next in the next year of your journey?
VG: More culture in design! My goal is to not just use design to share my culture, but to have my culture influence my design as well. It’s a circular loop that will hopefully lead to more interesting projects. You might see it in the form of another Lunar New Year spot series in The New Yorker, or some experimental zine coming out of Red Pocket.
Enzo Nguyen is a Boston-based designer.
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