Seen. A self-initiated project by a group of Asian designers and creatives at BB, exploring the interplay of personal and professional identities in a series of DMs. 

With Seen, we wanted to contribute to the discussion around Asian identities that came to the fore during the pandemic, but that otherwise receives little attention. Through personal and intimate text conversations, we explored questions of how our identities interweave with our professional ones, making sense of our own experiences through the act of sharing and relating. Using the DM format, we captured the ongoing process of navigating these identities in the industry — a process that often requires collective sense-making, and one that is forever in flux.

Seen is its own little universe, a space unto itself. The project references early messengers, like MSN and AOL, drawing on Y2K aesthetics and the magic of early hand-held devices. Both speculative and familiar, the softness and lightness of the space makes the stories accessible. By literally opening up our DMs, we wanted to give visitors the feeling of being invited into a conversation they might not see otherwise.

• Évoque Lab (3D models)

Seen was picked up widely across the industry, with features in It’s Nice That and Design Everywhere, and the platform winning gold in the digital design category of the 2023 Visuelt awards.