Obscura: Sparking Creative Activism
Master’s Thesis, Spring 2025
Obscura is my MFA thesis project at ArtCenter College of Design. Developed over the course of a year, it is both a personal and collective exploration of how designers, especially those from Generation Z, can reconnect with creativity in the face of environmental collapse, political disillusionment, and burnout.
The first expression of Obscura, this scroll-based animation came from a moment of creative paralysis, it’s the visual translation of an essay I wrote when I was feeling overwhelmed. Born from writing, emotion, and color, it visualizes the mental toll of the world and the process of slowly reconnecting with creativity. It sets the emotional tone for the entire project, turning stillness into movement, and feeling into form.
The project started at a breaking point: I was burnt out, overwhelmed, and questioning design itself. So I stopped designing and started writing.
What emerged was a raw reflection on grief, frustration, and the state of the world. That writing later became the foundation for Obscura: a multi-platform experience that explores the emotional side of creativity, where feeling deeply isn’t a weakness but a starting point.
Obscura invites designers to reflect on their emotional cycles and find purpose not in spite of them, but through them. It asks: What if your emotions were tools, not obstacles?
What emerged was a raw reflection on grief, frustration, and the state of the world. That writing later became the foundation for Obscura: a multi-platform experience that explores the emotional side of creativity, where feeling deeply isn’t a weakness but a starting point.
Obscura invites designers to reflect on their emotional cycles and find purpose not in spite of them, but through them. It asks: What if your emotions were tools, not obstacles?
A digital “third place” for young creatives to reflect, share, and reconnect with their process. The app hosts personal stories and creative explorations, encouraging vulnerability and exploration through community. Designed to support those navigating burnout, doubt, or disconnection, it offers a space to be curious and inspired.
From that piece, the project expanded into: a Manifesto grounded in research on purpose, design ethics, climate anxiety, and late capitalism; Nova, an conversational companion that connects users with creative exercises and shared experiences; and a community platform that functions as a “third place” for young creatives to process, explore, and connect with themselves and each other.
Through all the deliverables, I developed a visual system rooted in a custom color-emotion framework that maps the complexity of feeling through gradients and transitions.
Through all the deliverables, I developed a visual system rooted in a custom color-emotion framework that maps the complexity of feeling through gradients and transitions.
A series of printed pieces designed to extend Obscura into the physical world. Each poster features key phrases related to the manifesto paired with the project’s emotional color system. It’s meant to provoke reflection, offer comfort, or simply disrupt the visual noise of everyday life.
Obscura is also a response to the pressure young designers feel to constantly produce, succeed, and stay relevant in a system that often ignores their emotional reality. It embraces slowness, non-linearity, and softness as valid design strategies. Through personal narrative, communal tools, and emotional design systems, Obscura creates room for discomfort, experimentation, and healing. It’s a project that treats emotional depth not as something to overcome, but as a creative force to work with.
Nova is a conversational companion tool designed to help creatives reconnect with their process through emotion. By asking reflective prompts and connecting users with shared experiences from the community, Nova encourages vulnerability, self-awareness, and curiosity. It’s not here to give answers—but to hold space for exploration, one conversation at a time.
Obscura isn’t a solution—it’s a space. A space to feel, to pause, to rediscover joy through vulnerability. It’s about design that responds, adapts, and cares. A reminder that even in the darkest moments, creativity survives. Sometimes it even begins there.
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