Asem, your favourite designer

It’s such a joy to discover new ways of representing your ideas.

One of the things I discovered at Mason Gross is that, as a visual designer, your work doesn’t have to be tied to a screen or a printed page. There is so much freedom to step outside familiar formats, work with your hands, experiment with materials, and let an idea take a completely different form.

For me, one of those discoveries was glass.

Working with glass is such a fascinating process: mixing, melting, making molds, experimenting, waiting, failing, trying again, and constantly thinking about what an idea can become through this material.

This summer, I exhibited this work at the Today and Tomorrow show. I made every glass letter by hand, and I love each one of them. Glass can be incredibly difficult to work with, but that makes it even more satisfying when everything finally works—when you open the furnace and find the piece whole. Not cracked. Beautiful. Fragile.

You have to hold it with care if you don’t want it to break. And once it is broken, it can hurt you badly.

There is something deeply feminine about glass to me. It can be transparent without being simple. Delicate without being weak. It can carry light, distort what we see, survive enormous heat, and still remain fragile enough to shatter in your hands.

Glass is a woman to me.

Beautiful, complex, resilient, unpredictable.

Handle with care.

Created in collaboration with @rutgers_engineering