Get in Touch with Ryan Yan
A longtime friend and designer from Toronto, Canada. Rising senior at the Rhode Island School of Design studying Graphic Design and Computation.
Around late May, I visited Providence for the first time. It was a small, cozy college town that offered much-needed solace for me and Sammi, two gals desperately looking to escape NYC for a few days. We met up with Ryan and stayed at his apartment, a beautifully preserved townhouse on the hill. Looking at all the art prints and polaroids on his wall brought me closer to home, but still in an alternate universe far away from the hustle of New York.
All three of us went to the same high school in Toronto, attended the same arts program, and worked on the yearbook together. Ryan had visited New York a couple of times since he moved to Providence, but this was the first time we had enough time to catch up beyond small talk. Both being graphic designers, I have always been curious about his studies at RISD. It was fascinating to hear about his journey, his inspirations, and some of his favorite things. Read til the end to find out who Ryan recommended me to get in touch next… enjoy!
Ryan Yan is a designer from Toronto, Canada and currently studying Graphic Design and Computation at the Rhode Island School of Design. He loves motion graphics and web design and is interested in internet culture and language use. If he’s not responding to texts, he might be roaming the depths of are.na or playing Splatoon. Once you get a hold of him, try asking him about Hatsune Miku and tips for setting up ambient lights in your room. You can peek at Ryan’s work here!
As someone who’s interested in design, code, and linguistics, how do you see the three intersecting?
I was always unconsciously interested in languages, but didn’t know at the time there was a whole field dedicated to this study. Growing up I witnessed my Chinese grandmother struggle to learn English when she lived with us in Canada. I remember seeing her notebook filled with English and Chinese characters, each page decorated with tips and tricks on remembering how to pronounce words. I wondered if there was more to the story than just how the languages were structured. Was it the way that Latin characters and the Chinese script looked? Or perhaps was it about the space our languages were employed in—on websites, in books, in advertisements.
Code is also language—a network of them. It's a tool for communication but at the same time also a tool for creating new tools for communication; its recursive nature empowers us to find new ways to interact with one another. In middle school my dad enlisted me in Java classes on the weekend. Of course, I didn’t really care about sorting numbers into arrays but I became fascinated by how I was basically building calculators using just strings of text.
My interest in technology deepend when I realized that the backend to cool websites and my favourite games were all built using basic components. Like language is to music and poetry, code is a medium for expression. Their beauties unfold from what we build with them.
Finally, coming to RISD, I watched all three—design, code, and language—intersect into an amalgamation one can call a “practice”. I had the opportunity to cross-register in Brown’s linguistics department where I was introduced to the expansive worlds of phonology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics of English. The graphic design curriculum at RISD is centered around language and voice, so there was a very explicit connection with linguistics. At the same time, I watched code sneak its way back into my life through our school's Computation, Technology, and Culture (CTC) program. Their areas of overlap have produced some of the most exciting opportunities to create!
We went to the same high school together (shout out to Haig!), how was that experience for you?
High school was a crazy time!! I know this experience is not unique when I say that it was a bumpy ride; it’s hard not to cringe when I think about it but when I look back, I look fondly. Cynthia and I worked together in our yearbook club, Delphian! We spent the entire school year designing it, often pulling late nights to reach page deadlines and rotting away in the yearbook room designated to us (it had a microwave and couch!). Being the biggest secondary school in Toronto, I feel incredibly lucky to have crossed paths with so many amazing people. I couldn’t have asked for a better place to grow. Now, Cynthia and I are heading out into the rough design industry together!
What’s another non-design practise you have that brings inspiration to your work?
I’ve been writing poetry recently! Actually a lot of my urges for writing came from heartbreak (lol) and the shifting relationships amidst the turbulent time that is college. Much of it has come to inform my design practice; for example, the feeling I get from writing about love recently led me to creating a web page based on the universal pre-teen experience of using online love calculators. You can mess around with it here!
Another guilty pleasure of mine is watching math proofs on YouTube. I don’t really understand what’s going on but there is something beautiful about manifesting abstract concepts into tangible visual explanations. My favourite channel is 3Blue1Brown; they even have a special animation software called Manim that allows them to create gorgeous animations from math formulas (kind of reminds you of creative coding, doesn’t it?) On the same page as formulas, I took a course in compositional semantics last semester where we constructed equations for computing meaning in English. Using tools from set theory to Lambda calculus, we could abstract English into rules and proofs much like mathematical theories. I really struggled in the class as it was highly technical, but that challenge kept me going—perhaps it was the fact that I almost studied computer science post-secondary or that my favourite problems in math were proving trigonometric identities.
Senior year is approaching, any ideas on your thesis project yet?
It’s gonna be a bit about you, and a bit about me, and a lot about us!
Current reads and listens? (please provide pics and links if possible)
Reading ❌listening ❌watching ✅
I’m currently rewatching Sonny Boy for the 4th time with my roommate. It’s a beautiful original anime series that illustrates coming of age in a visual style that is brimming with life and character, backed by some of my favourite Japanese math rock bands, Mitsume and toe. Please watch it when you have a chance!
Ryan’s favourite things…
Rabbits! I have a growing collection of rabbit things in my apartment.. my dream is for my living space to look like a miffy store.
I want the rabbits to feel like the inhabitants of my living space—like little fairies in a Ghibli movie. For now, I’m just a caretaker who’s tending to my apartment, burrowing seeds in pockets of sunlight so they can grow into a beautiful garden for rabbits and friends alike :)
One person you think I should get in touch next?
Gabriel Drozdov is an incredibly inspiring person! He recently graduated from the RISD GD MFA program. I took his variable type workshop last year and I can speak for everyone who has ever taken one of his classes that he is an amazing educator. His commitment to design education and his expertise in code is unmatched.
Get in Touch is an ongoing series of conversations with creatives from all fields. Each guest shares their recent findings, inspirations, way of working— ending with introducing another creative to be the next feature.
