Of course, the experience of second-hand trading is not always pleasant. Due to the lack of a standardized platform specifically designed for international students to match supply and demand, various disputes and confusion often arise. Some people even choose to discard their unused items or give them away for free to acquaintances just to avoid the hassle. However, their friends may not always be the ones who truly need these items, leading to inefficiencies in their reuse and ultimately resulting in waste caused by mismatched information.

I believe that in such a large community, a widespread trading practice like this has not received enough attention or been properly structured. Through this unit, I hope not only to create a platform that better regulates transactions and efficiently connects supply with demand but also to establish a space where second-hand items with emotional value from the study abroad experience can be shared. This way, the community can become more closely connected through the circulation of these items, fostering shared experiences and interactions among its members.

It was during the later stages of my Unit 9 project that I suddenly found myself in urgent need of a printer. Browsing through social media, I came across a listing from a girl selling hers for just £10, with the condition that it had to be picked up that same day. I contacted her around noon, and she told me that she would be flying home at 5 PM. If I could collect the printer by 3 PM, she said, I could have it for free.

I was surprised but immediately set off to meet her. That day, London was cold. By 1 PM, the sky had already darkened, and a light but chilly drizzle had begun to fall. The rain slowed down traffic, and I worried about being late. However, before I even arrived, she was already waiting at the bus stop.

When I finally got there, I saw a petite Chinese girl standing in the rain without an umbrella, just a hood pulled over her head. She handed me a large all-in-one printer, carefully wrapped and packaged to make it easier to carry. She spoke softly, yet even in the rain, she took the time to patiently explain how to install and use it. I felt guilty and insisted on paying her, but she refused, saying she only wanted the printer that had accompanied her for the past year to have a second life.

On Chinese social media platforms, international students rarely use their personal accounts to sell second-hand items, preferring instead to create temporary profiles with default avatars and nicknames—often "Momo"—for privacy reasons. As a result, the marketplace is filled with an army of identical-looking "Momo" sellers, all seemingly anonymous. Yet in that moment, standing in front of her, I felt the warmth of a real person. Behind these identical, faceless profiles were individuals who had lived, struggled, and thrived in the UK, each with their own unique yet relatable experiences.

She spoke hurriedly, occasionally glancing at her phone, likely thinking about her flight and her luggage. She had formed an attachment to her belongings and hoped they would continue to be useful. She even took a moment to consider whether it would be convenient for me, a stranger with no financial exchange involved, to carry such a large box home. What connected us at that moment wasn’t just a simple transaction or a social obligation, but rather a shared identity—we were both part of the same community, here for the same purpose, facing the same challenges, and navigating the same transitions.

In the world of international students, belongings come and go just like their owners. They arrive, then leave, and the things they briefly used are passed on to the next person in need. But this isn’t the cold, transactional behavior of consumerism. Sometimes, the exchange happens without any financial motive, driven purely by a sense of connection and empathy within the community. These items, embedded with shared experiences, serve as silent links between strangers who might never meet again.

As I left, the rain grew heavier. She hurried off, quickly saying goodbye. Watching her walk away, I wondered if I was the last person she would see in London before she left.

I called out, "Thank you! Safe travels!"

She turned back, smiled, and said, "Thank you! I hope everything goes well for you in London!"

To me, when consumer behavior is placed within a transient, nomadic community, it takes on a completely different nature from the kind of consumerism we typically see. The dynamics shift, forming relationships built on trust and warmth rather than pure economic exchange. The widespread, almost universal practice of second-hand trading among international students is more than just a financial transaction; it is a cultural phenomenon, a silent, unspoken rule that fosters connection and support in a foreign land. Sometimes, it transcends financial interests altogether, turning into an act of pure kindness and generosity, a way for students with fleeting connections to extend goodwill to one another in a place far from home.

Firstly, in order to build a practical and user-friendly website, I need to conduct sociological research on the target audience and similar existing platforms. This part of the study aims to align the website’s actual functionalities and performance with the needs of its intended users.

Secondly, I will conduct design research focusing on web design and website promotion. Once the website’s functions and target audience’s needs are clearly defined, I will explore how to use a more relevant and effective design, including illustration styles, to better promote the platform to its intended users and enhance their overall user experience.

To develop a second-hand trading platform that aligns with user needs, I will conduct target audience research, focusing on international students' consumption habits, second-hand trading models, community interactions, and usage preferences. Additionally, I will analyze the applicability of existing second-hand trading platforms (such as eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Shpock) within the international student community. This research will incorporate the following sociological methods:

1-Participant Observation

I will actively join existing second-hand trading communities (such as WeChat, WhatsApp, and Facebook groups) to observe user interaction patterns, trading behaviors, major challenges, and trust mechanisms within these platforms. This method allows me to directly understand the actual needs and difficulties faced by international students in second-hand transactions (Goffman, 1961; Whyte, 1943).

2-In-Depth Interviews

By conducting semi-structured interviews with international students, community organizers, and users with prior experience in second-hand trading, I aim to gain insights into their decision-making processes, trust concerns, pricing strategies, usage pain points, and potential areas for improvement. Compared to surveys, in-depth interviews provide a richer and more nuanced understanding of user experiences and social contexts (Kvale, 1996; Hochschild, 2012).

3-Survey Research

To quantify research findings, I will design structured surveys to collect data on the trading behaviors of international students, including preferred platforms, transaction frequency, key factors influencing purchase decisions (such as price, safety, and convenience), and willingness to adopt a new platform. This approach will enable the collection of large-scale data to inform platform design.

In this section, I plan to collect 100-200 survey samples from the primary target audience. Additionally, to gain a holistic understanding of the differences between international students and local consumers, I will conduct a separate second-hand trading behavior survey targeting local residents and students as a control group, with a target sample size of 50-100 responses (Babbie, 2010; Smith, 1990).

-can I make this project‘s a broader audience?

-Is it possible that this project includes all international people living in the UK, not just students?

2-How to Make the IPS Project Better Support My Professional Portfolio?

To strengthen my portfolio as a commercial illustrator, I will ensure that my illustration work is an integral part of the project. Here are key areas of focus:

• Incorporating Illustration Work: Integrating my illustrations within the project will help showcase my artistic style and commercial potential.

• Practicing Web Development Skills: Developing the website as part of this project will enhance my technical proficiency, making my portfolio more versatile.

• Enhancing Commercial Marketing Research Skills: Conducting in-depth market research will improve my ability to understand industry trends and target audiences.

• Exploring the Connection Between Commercial Value and Illustration: Thinking strategically about how illustration can add value to commercial projects will refine my approach to professional opportunities.

2. What other research methods would be helpful?

3. Do you have any advice on the implementation/realization of my project?

4. What resources can I access to support my project? （skill supporting or funds）

To tackle this, I turned the act of survey collection into a design-led experiment grounded in consumer psychology and advertising theory.

Inspired by The Matrix, I used the well-known red vs blue pill symbolism, especially familiar in Western cultural contexts, to draw attention. I designed two QR codes, each linked to different-language versions of the same survey—Chinese and English—and assigned them to the red and blue pills held by Morpheus.

• Goal: Capture attention through shared cultural reference

• Design Logic: People resonate with known stories; this design anchors the concept of “choice”

• Theoretical Support:

  • Curiosity Arousal Theory: unusual visual cues draw in viewers

  • Symbolic Consumption (Baudrillard): meaning-laden symbols increase engagement through cultural familiarity

This poster used giant typography and extreme simplicity. Against a black background, the phrase “£50” stood out in bold white lettering, with smaller text below reading: “Have you ever filled out a £50 questionnaire?” The real story? I had accidentally signed up for a paid survey tool that charged me nearly £100 in subscription fees. I turned that mistake into a provocative headline.

• Goal: Generate dissonance to spark curiosity

• Design Logic: The absurdity of a £50 survey challenges expectations, creating tension viewers want to resolve

• Theoretical Support:

  • Cognitive Dissonance Theory: the mental discomfort provokes interaction to “make sense” of the situation

  • Availability Heuristic (Kahneman & Tversky): bold monetary figures trigger disproportionate attention

• Goal: Leverage the reciprocity principle to prompt voluntary action

• Design Logic: By giving something small first, participants feel morally nudged to reciprocate—even without social pressure

• Theoretical Support:

  • Reciprocity Principle: small gifts elicit disproportionate responses

  • Foot-in-the-Door Effect: taking candy is a small step, scanning a QR is the next logical step

. The site explores an abandoned mining town through memories, incorporating vintage photos, handwritten letters, and video interviews. Users navigate a linear story but can explore artifacts and rearrange on-screen objects, mimicking the feel of paging through an old family album

. This award-winning project shows how a warm, retro aesthetic and personal storytelling can merge in web design.

. Each frame of the video was drawn by a different fan, and the site continuously updates the “living” mosaic of illustrations. The result is an ever-evolving, warm tribute that combines personal storytelling (fans’ memories of Cash) with experimental web technology. Another example is The Wilderness Downtown (2010), an interactive film for Arcade Fire – it used the viewer’s childhood home (via Google Street View) to evoke nostalgia, literally integrating the user’s story into the experience. These projects show how conceptual web design can be deeply personal, blending illustration, music, and narrative.

theguardian.com

. It began as a modest installation of personal breakup relics (from the founders’ own split and contributions by friends) with brief captions about their significance​

lynettealh.medium.com

. The concept resonated globally – it grew into a permanent museum in Zagreb and a traveling collection that has toured 56 exhibitions across 6 continents, featuring objects and stories from 33 countries​

lynettealh.medium.com

. Everyday items – a pair of fake plastic breasts, a frisbee, a wedding dress – take on “a strong emotional charge” when paired with the anonymous donor’s story​

theguardian.com

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theguardian.com

. Each object is displayed with a text explaining its role in a relationship’s rise or demise, often just a few poignant sentences. The effect is profoundly narrative: visitors vicariously experience joy, heartbreak, nostalgia, and healing through these objects. The Museum of Broken Relationships shows how personal souvenirs and even junk (a phone, an old shoe, a love letter) can become artifacts of human emotion when framed as stories.

• Smooth visual transitions: images glide with mouse drag / miniature vehicle animation / typographic reveal on scroll.

• Logo and typography are designed to be eye-catching and memorable.

• Visual standout: clean, minimalist graphic layout that enhances legibility.

Personal Introduction

• Size & Fit Guide

• Q&A

• Selection Tips

• Studio Services Overview

• Contact Information

• Decorative Art for Purchase

• Privacy Policy

• External Social Media Links

• Content strategy: Focused on showcasing unique vintage goods, it mirrors the concept of my own project but shifts away from personal storytelling to emphasize aesthetic uniqueness and product character.

• Commercial advantage: Unlike emotionally-driven storytelling, visual distinctiveness encourages stronger purchasing decisions — increasing commercial viability.

• Web design style: Grid-based visual layout with unified product imagery gives users the impression of abundance and variety. This supports the site’s identity as "a great big vintage company."

• Unique dynamic feature: A rapidly counting inventory number (eventually stopping at 10,000) reinforces a sense of scale and thriving activity.

Impact: The integration of clashing elements enhances the artistic quality of the work, allowing for greater emotional resonance and accessibility in public-facing art.

It's like freezing a moment in time, not just with flat pictures, but by creating an entire environment you can revisit later.
In the context of personal spaces, like bedrooms or study rooms, 3D scanning has become a new way for people — especially students — to preserve memories of places that once felt like home

I find this phenomenon really touching, because it shows that when students leave, it's not just about packing up and moving on — there's a deep desire to hold onto the sense of place, the small scenes of everyday life that carried so much meaning. Every piece of furniture, every little object scattered across the room, becomes part of the memory of their time abroad.

When the end of the cycle approaches — graduation, moving out, going home — students naturally look for ways to hold onto what they built during that time: not just friendships or achievements, but the everyday environments that made them feel at home.
3D scanning becomes a way to preserve these spaces fully and vividly, almost like creating a time capsule of their daily life.

It shows that international students aren't just trying to keep a few souvenirs; they're trying to keep the feeling of belonging, of routine, of identity that they formed while abroad.
In a way, the 3D scan helps to soften the emotional gap between the intense experience of studying abroad and the inevitable return home.
It offers a way to revisit that chapter later — not just through memories, but through a real, navigable space that reminds them how it once felt to live there.

This directly supports the necessity of my project.
If students are willing to go to the effort of scanning entire rooms to preserve memories, it shows that the objects within those spaces — the furniture, the lamps, the kitchen tools, even the decorations — also hold emotional value.
These aren’t just second-hand goods; they are personal artifacts from a meaningful chapter of life.

In this way, my project doesn’t just help students deal with the practical need to sell or donate their belongings before leaving.
It also offers them a way to honor their memories and give a new life to the objects that were part of their experience — supporting both emotional closure and practical circulation in a natural, human-centered way.

More specifically, she pointed out that:

Text sizes across pages should be consistent to maintain visual rhythm.

Critical content should avoid being centered too closely to the booklet fold, as this risks content being misaligned or unreadable due to the binding structure.

The typeface selection must harmonies with the overall aesthetic tone of the design.

Bleed settings should be embedded into the layout early on to avoid last-minute production misalignments.

This feedback revealed a major blind spot in my process: I had spent extensive time refining illustration style, colour palettes, and applying consumer psychology strategies—believing that conceptual strength and inter-disciplinary thinking were the most essential components of impactful advertising. Yet ironically, I only spent 20 minutes arranging the type and layout—a last-minute step that ultimately became the most visibly flawed and structurally vulnerable part of my work.

Becky’s advice prompted a sharp reflection on my time allocation and design priorities throughout this project. I had devoted 50% of my effort to high-level conceptual development, 40% to visual/illustrative polish, and almost none to the core communicative structure—how information is actually delivered to the viewer

I re-imported the file into InDesign

Redesigned the page sequence as a saddle-stitched (booklet) print

Re-calculated the bleed and margin structure

Reformatted all typography with size unification and repositioned all central text

However, due to time constraints, I was unable to submit the optimised version to the printing house in time for the final presentation. Despite this, I proceeded to create a high-quality physical mockup, refining it through multiple iterations until I achieved the visual result I had originally envisioned.

Although I regret that these changes did not make it into the first print run, I now have a clear plan to update my printed materials before the final degree show. I intend to print 50 updated booklets to be distributed and sold alongside my platform-related merchandise, using the improved version as both a marketing object and tactile storytelling device.

Moving forward, I will embed these lessons into my future workflows by:

Integrating print production planning earlier in the design phase

Allocating structured time for *visual testing and audience readability

Valuing communication clarity as much as narrative depth

What I initially experienced as a shortfall has become a valuable pivot point in my design literacy and decision-making. And more importantly, it realigned me with one of the most essential goals of this project: to make emotional meaning visible, readable, and shareable—not just ideologically rich, but also physically coherent.

To avoid this negative framing, I carefully selected official, authorised campus bulletin boards. I surveyed and posted in 8 London university campuses, including five University of UAL sites, UCL, LSE, and Goldsmiths.

• Psychological Insight: Illegally placed content is subconsciously perceived as untrustworthy

• Execution: All posters were placed in legal, permitted public spaces

• Theoretical Support:

  • Interpersonal Trust Theory (Rotter, 1967): Source credibility affects perceived truthfulness

  • Framing Effect (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981): Clean, sanctioned environments frame the message as more trustworthy and high-value

• Back of toilet doors

• Inside elevator walls

• Over sinks and hallway waiting zones

Each environment was paired with context-appropriate poster designs to match user attention levels.

• Core Strategy: Leverage attention windows during unoccupied cognitive states

• Theoretical Support:

  • Environmental Priming & Non-Conscious Processing (Bargh, 1994): Context automatically activates associated behaviours

  • Task-Switching Theory (Kahneman, 2011): People in low-cognitive-load states are more receptive to peripheral stimuli

Key tactics included:

• Posting 4 to 6 flyers together to form a colour-saturated grid

• Using dark-on-light / light-on-dark contrast logic based on wall tones

• Creating a candy-shaped border using sweets taped around the poster—a strategy that sparked attention even before the setup was complete

• Execution Strategy: Use grouped, bright, and contrasting visuals to draw the eye

• Theoretical Support:

  • Gestalt Proximity Principle: Repetitive visual elements in close proximity increase perceptual grouping and attention

  • Contrast Enhancement Effect: High brightness/saturation differences intensify viewer focus and recall

This stage of the project helped sharpen my sensitivity toward the real-world friction between design theory and human behaviour. It reinforced that impact isn’t made on paper—it’s made in space.

Respondent Profile:

• Gender imbalance: 79% female respondents, suggesting higher engagement or relevance within the female demographic.

• Short-term international students: Over 70% have studied in the UK for less than two years, indicating a transitional living phase with more fluid ownership of objects.

• Modest spending capacity: The majority spend under £1000/month, emphasizing affordability as a core value in second-hand consumption.

Second-hand Behavior Trends:

• Widespread participation: 78.5% have engaged in second-hand transactions, showing it's a mainstream behavior among Chinese students.

• Most traded items: Daily essentials (48.9%), followed by clothing (19.1%) and electronics (11.7%).

  Motivations and Concerns:

• Price is king: 80.8% buy second-hand mainly due to lower prices; environmental or sentimental values are secondary.

• Key concerns when buying: Quality (52.2%) and convenience (13%) top the list, signaling room for better UI/UX and item standardization.

• Sentiment plays a role: 89.9% once hesitated to sell something due to its emotional significance—affirming that memory and meaning matter in item retention.

Platform Expectations:

• Top features expected: searchable categories (69.6%) and safety guarantees (60.9%).

• Strong interest in emotional archives: Over 77% would like a feature that lets users record and share the stories behind their items, especially within a “student archive” context.

Key Frustrations with Current Platforms:

• Untrustworthy buyers/sellers (57.6%)

• Unorganized listings (51.5%)

• Difficult price negotiations (34.8%)

Inspired by works like The Hotel and Take Care of Yourself, I designed the emotional archive module not as a data entry field, but as a soft interface that invites users to project, reflect, or release meanings. I intentionally avoided rankings or comment-based sorting, in response to Calle’s sensitivity towards the ethics of exposure and the power of ambiguity.

This resonates deeply with your platform:
I merely facilitating the sale of used goods, but rather, enabling the summoning of memories and meaning through second-hand objects.

In my platform’s “Emotional Object Archive,” users are similarly empowered to narrate the stories behind their belongings. This becomes a process of reassembling object → person → social connection.

We are surrounded by things. Some we buy, some we keep, and some simply stay with us — quietly absorbing our time, our habits, our feelings. Yet only when they’re gone, broken, or passed on, do we start asking:
What did this object really mean to me?

According to the Metropolitan Police (2024), there were 74,296 mobile phone theft cases in London in 2023, a 39.4% increase from the previous year. Among these incidents, Asian international students are frequently affected, as seen in recurring discussions across platforms like Reddit and Xiaohongshu. This isn’t a niche issue—it’s a shared urban reality.

From a communication design perspective, grabbing attention quickly and building immediate emotional resonanceis crucial. The “phone snatching” moment functions as both a psychological trigger and a collective emotional reference point.

To validate the concept, I shared the draft with 10 peers for informal feedback. Surprisingly, more than half misinterpreted the image:

Some read it as a struggle.
Others saw it as two people protecting the phone or passing it to one another

To resolve this, I redesigned the imagery with more symbolic clarity and emotional urgency. I replaced the human hand with a serpent-like figure, using the following strategies:

• Cultural symbolism: Snakes, across both Eastern and Western traditions, carry connotations of danger, deceit, and intrusion.

• Form and edge: I stylized the assailant’s hand as a snake with sharp, angular contours, evoking aggression.

• Color psychology: I chose black and red tones to emphasize danger, fear, and violation.

• Dynamic expression: I added explosive radiating lines in the background to give the static image a burst of movement.

In my second round of testing, all 8 respondents correctly identified the visual narrative as “phone snatching”, confirming that the redesign successfully resolved prior ambiguities and strengthened the emotional resonance of the cover.

However, after completing the first draft, I reassessed the long-term implications of this palette and realized a clear tension between the visual intensity and the overall emotional tone of my project. My website aims to convey themes of emotional connection, belonging, and gentle farewell — a narrative structure centered around meaning reconstruction, not social critique. While the black-and-red scheme was visually striking, it risked pulling the audience into a space of anxiety or negativity, weakening the later emotional transition toward warmth.

Based on this insight, I decided to restructure the color palette, with the following adjustments:

• Removed the sharp contrast of pure black and bright red to avoid triggering “trauma reenactment” in visual perception;

• Introduced soft background tones aligned with the website’s identity (such as off-white, pale blue, or muted green) to create a more inclusive and psychologically comforting visual base;

• Retained selective accent colors (like navy blue or warm yellow) to highlight motion and focal points, while ensuring the color rhythm remained consistent throughout the booklet;

• Shifted the overall style from a “high-contrast incident frame” to a more “narrative illustration balance”, supporting cohesion and visual longevity.

From the perspective of advertising theory, this marks a deliberate shift from attention-grabbing design to emotionally immersive design. I didn’t eliminate visual impact — rather, I compressed it into specific narrative moments, allowing the “emotional spark” to act as the starting point of the story, not its dominant atmosphere.

In the end, this color adjustment not only reduced the viewer’s emotional defensiveness, but — after repeated user tests with ten unfamiliar audience members — it also enhanced the coherence, unity, and visual harmony of the booklet within the context of a graduate exhibition or public communication environment.

After losing control, we begin to see the hidden value of things that have remained—objects that stayed with us, shaped us, and reminded us who we were.

This follows a classic Emotional Arc Shift structure (Dahlén & Rosengren, 2005), widely used in impactful advertising:
Capture attention → Release tension → Redirect toward hope or meaning.

This cover is not meant to shock for the sake of spectacle.
It is meant to gently open a conversation—one that begins in loss but moves toward presence, recognition, and emotional clarity.

“Have you ever truly lost something?”
If yes, then surely, there are also things you’ve held onto—not because they were useful, but because they meant something.

That is the dialogue I wish to begin with this project.
And this cover—visually striking yet emotionally sincere—is the invitation.

Narrative Transition Design:
The second page immediately switches to a warm, uplifting color scheme (orange-yellow, off-white) and introduces a new emotional context through the heading:
“The phone was taken, but what it meant is still with me.”
This shift is supported by overlapping visuals and text that tell a quiet story of emotional recovery: “I reopened my old diary, found my childhood plush toy, remembered the little pot my mother gave me.” These moments reframe loss into rediscovery.

Mechanism of Meaning Reconstruction:
The core message of the ad is not victimhood — it is rebuilding significance through material anchors. The stolen phone is just the starting point. What I truly aim to express is how people regain a sense of safety and identity after disruption through the objects that still remain with them.

Cultural Sensitivity Strategy:
Throughout the design and narrative, I intentionally avoid referencing any specific ethnicity or demographic. Instead, I use universal language to evoke a shared experience:
“Feeling vulnerable in a foreign city.”
This positions the story as collective and inclusive, avoiding labels while building emotional commonality

At the same time, I avoided tech-heavy or flat-cold tones, ensuring the palette retained a sense of human warmth and approachability.

By combining digital collage with hand-drawn illustration, I aimed to craft a visual language that is both striking and narratively versatile. While collage introduces a sense of reality-fracture and disruption, illustration softens this with emotional accessibility. This approach allowed me to move fluidly between the tangible and the abstract, the past and the present—especially useful when exploring the symbolic connection between objects and personal meaning

Several visual elements from these references stood out and significantly influenced my later decisions

Throughout the production process, I maintained a highly visual and annotated communication workflow. For every interaction or revision, I prepared updated mock-up diagrams with detailed annotations, clearly highlighting the required changes, user experience considerations, and specific design intentions. This not only minimized miscommunication but also allowed us to iterate quickly and efficiently.

More importantly, this experience taught me far more than just coding syntax—it gave me insight into the real challenges of cross-disciplinary collaboration, especially in tech-design hybrid teams. I learned how to articulate visual ideas in functional language, how to negotiate priorities, and how to adapt my design decisions based on technical constraints.

In hindsight, while learning to code was valuable, the ability to communicate with a developer, align visions, and translate aesthetics into actionable logic was the most significant takeaway. It has prepared me for future collaborative roles in creative industries where design and engineering must constantly work hand in hand.

In the sketch, I specifically annotated the following key elements:

• The brand identity and thematic prompt at the top of the page;

• A horizontally scrollable area displaying key symbolic objects;

• A grid-based exhibition section for object stories, with vertical scroll functionality;

• Community access and contact buttons located at the bottom of the page.

This sketch not only helped me clarify the internal logic of the site layout, but also served as a crucial reference point when I began working with my technical collaborator, Miss Xu. I sent her this draft with detailed interaction notes marked next to each core section. This method of combining “visuals + instructions” significantly reduced communication loss and enabled us to enter a productive workflow even before a fully shared vocabulary had formed.

The final booklet measures 30 x 12 cm, formatted horizontally with a landscape fold. The result is a vibrant, substantial piece that feels high-quality in hand—well-suited for distribution at graduate shows or public promotional events.

During production, the studio advised that some of my color choices—particularly highly saturated hues like electric blue and bright orange-red—could not be perfectly reproduced in CMYK due to the inherent limitations of the four-color printing system. However, they committed to adjusting color curves to approximate the intended vibrancy as closely as possible within the print color space.

In the end, the final product successfully achieved a strong balance of color accuracy and physical presence, delivering a visually striking and materially satisfying support piece for the overall identity of the project.

In terms of layout, I organized the content using card-based modules, allowing sections such as “Who we are,” “Week Rank,” and the “Item Story Gallery” to form a layered visual progression. This ensures logical information flow while enhancing user immersion during browsing. For the first time, I incorporated an auto-scrolling horizontal carousel as a fixed component of the homepage, adding dynamism and a stronger sense of “market atmosphere.”

Regarding the color strategy, I ultimately settled on bright yellow, soft lilac, and light blue as the primary palette to emphasize the platform’s warm tone and emotional recognizability. The consistent use of these colors at both the top and bottom of the page also creates a visually cohesive loop, giving the site a greater sense of unity and completeness

1. Promotional Video Section
   I added a dedicated area to display the promotional video I created for the platform. Positioned prominently, this section functions as a visual and emotional gateway, introducing the concept of Echo Market through storytelling rather than static visuals alone.

2. Digital Booklet Display
   Right below the video, I embedded a preview module for the digital version of my printed advertising booklet. This addition serves both as an archive and as a narrative extension of the physical material, ensuring coherence between offline and online communication.

These updates mark a key moment in the development process, where the homepage began to shift from purely functional layout planning to a more immersive, media-rich storytelling environment

One of the key upgrades in this version was the rethinking of the top navigation menu. Instead of using generic terms like "Home" or "Menu", I redesigned each label to align more closely with the emotional tone and storytelling style of the platform. This shift gave the interface a more customized and character-rich identity.

In terms of typography, I wanted to unify the site visually by using hand-drawn fonts for key thematic areas. However, during implementation, I encountered a limitation—there was no easily accessible system font that matched the style of my handwritten headers. After consultation with Miss Xu, we settled on a hybrid solution: all primary titles and main menu labels would be manually exported as transparent PNGs using my custom handwriting, while supporting body text would default to a Microsoft system font. This compromise allowed us to maintain visual coherence without overcomplicating the site’s technical requirements.

Throughout this process, I upheld visual and experiential consistency as the core design principle. My goal was to retain as much of the original design sensitivity and aesthetic detail as possible, while working within the boundaries of technical feasibility. The following images present selected examples of these subpage layouts, each refined through ongoing negotiation between ideal form and practical constraints.

• Attracting Attention: In a content-saturated online environment, moving elements such as bouncing logos, shifting texts, or animated buttons help guide the user's gaze more intuitively.

• Reinforcing Brand Identity: Motion establishes rhythm and personality. My handwritten letters animate into form one stroke at a time, visually echoing the theme of “rebuilding meaning” from fragments—mirroring the essence of the project.

• Enhancing Storytelling: Unlike static layouts, animation can create a sense of narrative flow, which is particularly powerful for platforms like Echo Market, where users are encouraged to share personal memories tied to objects.

Style: The animation features simplified doodles and handwritten typography—letters draw themselves, icons float subtly—creating a playful, organic feel.

Integration: By embedding these as looping videos on the homepage carousel, I ensured compatibility with most browsers while avoiding performance issues common to CSS/JS-heavy animation.

Consistency in Aesthetic: The soft color palette and animated handwriting harmonize with the overall design language of Echo Market—childlike, sincere, and nostalgic.

Simplicity Meets Impact: Using video instead of code-based animation lowered technical barriers while still delivering a visually rich experience.

Low cost, low risk: Compared to tote bags, T-shirts, or mugs, stickers are cost-effective and ideal for small-batch production in the early stages.

Portable and easy to distribute: Stickers are small, lightweight, and can be attached to daily objects like laptops, phones, bottles — becoming subtle tools for brand dissemination.

High recognizability: Each anthropomorphized object carries distinct emotional expression, making them easy to “recognize” and strengthening the visual memory of the Echo Market brand.

Emotional affinity: Stickers easily become tokens of companionship — which ties directly to the platform’s core concept: that objects carry memories and meaning.

Online shop extension: After the exhibition, I plan to develop a “Shop” section on the Echo Market site, offering stickers, postcards, and illustrated stationery. This is a low-cost way to explore the commercialization potential of the brand.

Supporting long-term operations: Since the platform is designed for long-term use, consistent funding is necessary to maintain server and domain costs. While sticker sales may not bring large profits, they offer a meaningful way to experiment with self-sustaining operations.

I tried several mainstream website builders such as Cargo, Wix, and Squarespace. While they are user-friendly, I soon encountered several limitations when attempting to construct a logical and expressive layout:

• The design language of templates often failed to match the tone of my work;

• The interaction structure was rigid, making it difficult to realize the user flow I envisioned;

• Customization was limited—even fonts and buttons were bound by preset frameworks;

• Long-term maintenance and editing required subscription fees, making migration or updates cumbersome.

This made me wonder: Could I own a website that is entirely mine, free from platform constraints?

We started with mockups and iteratively refined the structure, functionality, and visual system. I was responsible for the design and layout logic; she handled the development based on my visuals. Eventually, we built a highly autonomous system:

- I fully own the website's source code, meaning I can deploy it on any server and manage it independently of any third-party platform;

- It’s free and fully modifiable: I can update or redesign it anytime without subscription constraints;

- It’s a sustainable design asset: the website itself reflects my control over structure and my pursuit of expressive freedom.

Of course, there are still technical limitations compared to mature commercial templates—the animations are less smooth, and the structure may lack some polish. But I see this as an ongoing process: I will continue refining the site after graduation, treating it not as a one-time task, but a long-term design practice.

In reality, employers and collaborators only spend a few seconds browsing a website. What they care about is:

Who are you?

What have you done?

Can you communicate it clearly and with character?

Based on this, I adopted several concrete strategies:

Streamlined Information Architecture: I only kept essential sections with clear navigation, ensuring every click has a defined goal and avoiding disorienting user flow;

Consistent Visual Language: I applied a cohesive illustration style, color palette, and heading typography to strengthen brand recognition;

Modular Project Presentation: Each work is embedded within a structured module that guides the viewer through visuals, background, methodology, and impact—avoiding the feeling of a chaotic portfolio dump;

Tonal Control: I used a gentle, restrained writing style, avoiding overuse of personal tags or buzzwords. The emphasis is always on the meaning and effect of the project, not personal branding hype.

It proves I’m not reliant on templates, that I can independently shape structure, collaborate across disciplines, and build a platform that is maintainable, expandable, and deeply mine.

It doesn’t only say what I’ve done—it shows how I work.

And that, for me, is the deeper definition of personal presentation.

In the early stages of visual research, I drew inspiration from a range of vlog-style commercials that aligned with the tone of my platform—particularly Japanese ads known for their casual camera work and narrative tone. I was especially influenced by the famous Pocari Sweat commercial filmed in a high school setting with a single take, as well as campaigns from brands like Suntory and MUJI, which often combine everyday life fragments with unscripted voiceovers to create a restrained yet emotionally evocative atmosphere. This understated, diary-like approach strongly resonated with the emotional tone I envisioned for my platform: light narration paired with memory-driven storytelling.

I invited friends who had meaningful relationships with old belongings to participate in the filming process. We held a dinner to share thoughts, gather feedback, and discuss the idea. These conversations introduced new perspectives that I found extremely valuable.

If you experience occasional inaccessibility or find that some pages or content are missing during your review, this is to be expected. These issues may occur because I am actively editing and fine-tuning the site in real-time to ensure it reaches its best state before the graduation showcase.

If you have any questions or would like to access the complete version of the website content, feel free to email me directly — I will respond as quickly as possible and provide the necessary materials. Thank you for your understanding and patience.