spring 2025
Future Forward Design is a seasonal feature by Design Dispatch that spotlights emerging designers shaping the future of creativity across disciplines.
Jacob Hwan Lee is a recent RISD graduate (Graphic Design) whose work focuses on identity systems and typographic storytelling. His portfolio shows a consistent interest in crafting identities that use type as the primary expressive material — projects alternate between editorial systems, event identities, and concept-driven campaigns that foreground refined typographic hierarchy and playful structural grids. Jacob’s work often explores how typography can act as narrative pacing: letterforms, scale, and motion are used to guide the viewer through argument and mood rather than merely labeling content. Jacob’s portfolio pieces (for example the “Circus Hall of Fame” and RISD yearbook project shown on his One Club Young Ones profile) demonstrate strong craft and a sensitivity to cultural tone — type choices and color systems are tuned to the project’s social register (historic, playful, institutional). The presentation is thoughtful about process: sketches, iterations, and final outputs appear together so viewers can quickly see design decisions and rationale, which makes these projects useful both for hiring and for editorial pick-up.
Solea 23 is a modular + biodegradable sneaker designed to make everyday footwear more sustainable. Since Solea’s design is modular, it’s easy to disassemble and reassemble, and ships deconstructed in a flexible mailer instead of a traditional shoebox. This allows the user to familiarize themselves with the assembly of their new shoes. Additionally, flexible mailers provide a reduced delivery carbon footprint, as they utilize space more efficiently than their counterparts. Instead of using normal mailers with plastic wrap and plastic exteriors, Solea would also partner with a sustainable packaging company such as Woola, a packaging manufacturer that uses waste sheep’s wool as package padding.
TAILOR FREE is a collaborative project with IBM when I studied in Central Saint Martin, UAL. It aims to minimize fabric waste generated during the draping process in fashion design. By optimizing the system structure of existing fashion modeling software and introducing new product/UI designs, it aims to create a sustainable and immersive design experience for fashion designers while driving innovation in fashion design.
Exploring career options through mentorship for high school students. There is a disconnect between high school students expectation of a career and what the reality of the careers day-to-day is. There is a lack of fostering and mentorship for students to better understand how their diverse interests, and personalities can play a role in careers selection There is a need to assist students in broaden their perspectives, while also helping them focus on a career best fit for their personality and the environment in which they thrive.
Future Forward Design is a seasonal feature by Design Dispatch that spotlights emerging designers shaping the future of creativity across disciplines.
Konnect'd is the umbrella company overlooking all things travel, media, and entertainment. Konnect'd is made up of Konnect'd Travel, Konnect'd Infinite, and Konnect'd Entertainmen Konnect'd Travel is an organizer of fun group travel, without the chaos of planning your itinerary or stress of finding friends to travel with. They have successfully gone on 2 trips to Seoul, South Korea and they are looking to expand to different locations in the future
"Jamour Chames is a contemporary artist based in New York, originally from Kentucky, whose work seeks to celebrate women and positive imagery. His well-known series *Girl All Over The World* is a tribute to women globally, using minimalistic forms, bold color fields, and simplified shapes to avoid objectification and instead foreground strength and presence. His earlier life as a graphic designer informs his clarity of composition and attention to narrative and visual symbolism. In *Girl All Over The World*, Chames aims to transcend culture, sex, race, asserting “She is every woman”. The collection is exhibited internationally; his pieces often adapt or respond to local contexts around exhibitions, making work that resonates both globally and locally. The artist uses his art to influence perceptions positively.
The project focuses on the current situation of global warming, glacier melting, survival crisis of polar bears and so on to create a survival game. It aims to call for protecting the planet, glaciers and polar bears by transforming players into authentic environmental activists. This game is expected to be of educational significance.
"Adam Niklewicz is an illustrator whose work lies at the intersection of editorial, publishing, and conceptual illustration. He often visualizes abstract or systemic concepts — for example for annual reports, corporate communications, magazines — using metaphor, bold compositions, and visual logic that helps complex ideas become more digestible. His style is clean but expressive, often balancing negative space, texture, and architecture. :contentReference[oaicite:6]{index=6} He has been commissioned by major publications and institutions; his portfolio includes work for Time, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, etc. Projects display iterations, sketches, final polished art, and context (brief, client goal) so the descriptive dimension is clear. :contentReference[oaicite:7]{index=7}"
Eva Yu is a product designer & writer based in New York whose work spans UX/UI, product strategy, and content. Her portfolio highlights both practical case studies and thought-pieces: she does project work but also writes about design, learning, and inspirations. She demonstrates a balanced skill set: visual design polish, user experience flow, prototyping, and reflection. Recent projects include explorations of prompt-use cases for AI, gaming influences in design process, and storytelling learning. These are presented with clarity on design decisions, trade-offs, and aesthetic system. Her public writing helps external viewers understand not just what was designed, but why.
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Rufus Royster is a mixed media artist (drawing, painting, collage) whose work often engages with portraiture, identity, cultural experience, especially in Black America. His compositions combine decorative pattern, color, symbolic elements, and texture layers. The work is expressive, energetic, often intimate in scale but conceptually bridges personal and communal narratives. His background includes study in BFA Fine Art, and his work has evolved over many years to explore intersections between image, ornament, memory, and place. Project presentations include prints, papercuts, collage elements, layering of decorative motif over figurative representation, which create tension between surface and depth.
Meghan Wardell is an illustrator from Detroit, Michigan, focused on children’s illustration and entertainment design. She studied illustration formally, and her style features organic, loose feel, vibrant color, a strong sense of narrative and environment. Her typical media include casein and watercolor, with strong sensitivity to negative space and whimsical elements. Her commission work includes book illustrations, entertainment-based design, and personal world-building through environmental scenes. Her pieces often reimagine suburban spaces, mixing the everyday with magical/fantastical moments, immersing the viewer in both place and story.