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I am a passionate Product Designer and Graphic Illustrator with a talent for transforming creative visions into impactful products. My expertise spans trend analysis, 2D/3D design, and prototyping, allowing me to craft designs that seamlessly balance storytelling, functionality, and aesthetics.
By prioritising designs that resonate with audiences and make a meaningful market impact, I excel at transforming ideas into outstanding outcomes.
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Apr 2024
Leicester Can I Taste It: Exploring the Sweet Illusions and Empty Realities of Cyber LoveIllustration｜Packaging Design｜Media DesignA playful yet poignant project that uses fortune cookies to examine the emotional highs and hollow promises of cyber relationships, reflecting on gender dynamics and the gap between fantasy and reality.
This project was deeply personal to me. During the pandemic, I experienced a nine-month cyber relationship, one that started sweetly but left me with feelings of emptiness and disillusionment. That experience became the foundation for “Can I Taste It?”, where I use fortune cookies as a metaphor to explore the gap between fantasy and reality in cyber love.
Where It All Started
Cyber love can feel so magical at first, can’t it? Sweet promises exchanged through voice messages, the excitement of imagining a future together—it almost seems too good to be true. And often, it is. For me, those words, spoken so effortlessly through a phone, eventually felt hollow, disconnected from the reality I was hoping for. It was like tasting something sugary only to find it flavourless.
What struck me most was how these dynamics reflect deeper issues in our culture. Growing up in China, I’ve noticed how little emphasis is placed on women developing their independence. We’re often taught to rely on others—especially men—both emotionally and practically. This creates a kind of vulnerability, especially in cyber relationships, where it’s so easy for someone to construct an illusion and gain emotional control. I found myself wondering: how much of what I believed was real, and how much was simply projection?
The Fortune Cookie Concept
This is where the fortune cookie comes in. To me, it was the perfect symbol for cyber love: a glossy, enticing exterior filled with promises, but when you break it open, what do you really get? I decided to fill my cookies not with the usual fortunes, but with printed voice chatboxes—replicas of the voice messages that are so central to long-distance relationships.
But here’s the twist: you can’t “read” a voice message on paper. It’s absurd, isn’t it? That’s exactly the point. The messages—empty promises like “I’ll take care of you forever” or “We’ll travel the world together”—become even more meaningless when stripped of their sound. All that’s left is the gap between what you hoped for and what you actually have.
The Design Process
The project’s visual language is bright, surreal, and slightly satirical. I wanted the cookie packaging to feel just like cyber love does at first—enticing, full of promise, almost too perfect. The illustrations show dreamlike fantasies of romance: couples travelling together, sharing intimate moments, building an idyllic future. But when you open the cookie, you’re met with the stark reality of the printed chatboxes.
The voice chatboxes themselves are intentionally designed to feel frustrating. They look familiar, like what you’d see on a messaging app, but they’re completely unreadable—just static, visual noise. It mirrors how I felt during my own cyber relationship: listening to so many words, yet feeling like I was left with nothing.
A Reflection on Culture and Gender
This project also gave me a chance to reflect on the societal norms that shape these dynamics, especially in the context of Chinese culture. Women are rarely encouraged to develop their independence, and that lack of autonomy can leave us more susceptible to manipulation in relationships—both online and offline.
Cyber spaces, in particular, can amplify this imbalance. The screen allows people to craft idealised versions of themselves, and women are often expected to buy into these illusions without question. I wanted to explore not just the emotional dissonance of cyber love, but also the broader cultural structures that perpetuate dependency and control.
What I Hope You’ll Take Away
Can I Taste It? is ultimately about expectation versus reality. It’s about that moment when you eagerly break open the cookie, only to realise there’s nothing inside that you can actually use or hold onto. Through this project, I wanted to capture the sweetness, the absurdity, and the emptiness of cyber love—and to spark questions about the ways culture and technology shape our emotional lives.
Does cyber love truly nourish us, or are we just feeding on illusions? And how can we, especially women, start breaking free from the roles we’ve been taught to play in these dynamics?
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