This stamping experience is based in my hometown, Plano, TX. I was born and raised there, and I'm very proud of my hometown! When I was tasked to create a hometown souviner, I knew I wanted to focus on the unique aspects of Plano; it's a suburb yet at the same time it's not. Plano has grown so much, and I knew that would be part of the research that I would conduct: about the headquaters and industry and the Asian—particularly Chinese—population that grew along with the city.

The project brief was pretty broad: requiring us to design a small handheld object that would represent our hometown through Allan Shearer's Abduction to Argument, a design thinking framework.

To guide us, my professor gave us questions that would help us get started. It raised questions about the word hometown. What is Home? Is it the location of your parental home? Is it where you were born? Is it the place you have lived longest? Or is it the place you like best? What is special about your hometown?

It also raised questions about souviners. Who chooses the images, history, people, symbols that represent a place? Are there alternate histories, people, places and images that visitors are drawn to in your home town? That are made invisible, or that you believe should be represented?

Since my professor wanted us to research anything and everything about our hometown, I spent hours researching: looking up articles, books, and research papers about Plano in archives; scouring every corner of the Plano Public Website; and revisiting my own experience with stories upon stories.

Based on my curiousity growing up, I wanted to explore why there are so many Asians that live in Plano and in that area. I also knew that headquaters in Plano is another mystery to me, so no matter what, I wanted to explore those two options.

Click hereto read the full extend of my research journey about Plano

Based on my curiousity growing up, I wanted to explore why there are so many Asians that live in Plano and around the area. I also knew that there are many headquaters in the area, but I wanted to know why. So no matter what, I wanted to explore those two options.

After finishing up my research on Plano, Texas, I started to brainstorm some random ideas that I could make. These were just some quick jots downs, so I didn't make many thumbnails.

On Feb. 15th, I talked to Kate about the framework we were using for this project. We're using the Design Thinking Framework by Shearer. It took a while of explaining for me to understand it, and even when I did, I had trouble thinking through it. I am not used to using a framework like this to create a project. On the spread below, you can see that I was trying to think through two different frameworks. Even though the ideas seem pretty different, the objectives are pretty much the same: for those to make and remember good memories about Plano.

At first (on the right side), I wanted this to be reflected when people were doing their work at a desk since Plano is known to be a very academic and hard working city. Each year, Plano has over 4,000 graduating high school students, many of whom go to university. They could take a piece of Plano with them and remember that they had many good memories to look back on. Another scenario is for corporate workers. Since there are many headquarters in Plano, many people relocate to the Plano area, so with this souvenir, they could record their memories as they happen—an incentive to explore Plano.

Along that same line, I thought of my second option for a framework: Plano is a heavily populated Asian area, with one of the high schools—Plano West Senior High School—30% Asian and 30% White (Non-Hispanic).Because of this, my image of the world is a non-traditional Asia-town. One of challenge for a non-traditional Asia-town, especially as it's a suburb, is that there isn't one central area to explore. The objective would then be to help those who are visiting (most likely Asian relatives visiting) explore Plano's Asian side or those who are leaving (likely high school students going off to college) to remember the memories they've made in a special Asian spot in Plano.

As I was working through my ideas for form, I started by sketching forms for essentially both frameworks. Most of my first ideas had to do with customizing an object to be more “Plano-ified” with either a map or a photo holder as the objective of the object.

My next few ideas had to do with the tech side of Plano. I was inspired by various technologies, turning a PC into a Plano PC and a space bar into a Plano space bar keycap.

I also had some ideas about the history of Plano, with an emphasis on celebrating the work and history of Asian and Chinese Americans in the area since almost the beginning of Plano's history.

Plano also has a few festivals that are either hosted or sponsored by the City of Plano, so I sketched a few ideas for the respective festivals (The Plano Balloon Festival and AsiaFest).

However while talking to some classmates about all of my sketches, the idea that drew the both of them in were the stamp and charm ideas that I had for various concepts. They really liked the idea of having to explore Plano in order to get a complete set of souvenirs. But there's a difference in how the audience would end of using either stamps or charms. Charms could be in the form of a phone holder, a bracelet, or keychain, which would be more “present” in their lives, whereas a stamp could be displayed somewhere, it's likely to not be used or seen after the first use.

I started to think and sketch through both ideas. I was pretty conflicted because I really liked both ideas. I started to form an idea of using the 12 zodiacs to help explore, connect, and limit the number of places.

While talking to Kate about my ideas, she suggested something that sort of blew my mind: “why not combine the two?” I had been talking about the pros and cons of each design. For the stamps, a con was the body of the stamps being quite boring and simple, which is when she suggested that I combine the two. The charms that I had been designing could be the bodies for the stamps. Absolutely genius.

I wanted to tie various Asian spots in Plano to a piece of culture. 12 just happened to be a good number, and Chinese zodiacs are a pretty simple way to connect someone to Chinese culture. Most people know the basics about the Chinese Zodiacs, or at least they know that there are 12 animals and their own birth year. Animals are also very simple and cross cultures easily, yet the Chinese zodiac story could easily be introduced and held within the designs of these objects.

There are 12 zodiacs, so I could combine each zodiac with a different spot in Plano. Each one would have their own meaning; a connection between the animal and the location. At each spot, there would be the option to just stamp the design in the booklet or to buy the stamp as a keepsake. There is also a map that would show the other spots in Plano that are participating, so visitors (like Asian relatives visiting Plano relatives) could explore Plano's “Asia-town.”

It's a simple way to get visitors to interact with various parts of the city and the people who live in the city; and in a way they would've never explored before.

Haggard Library nowadays doesn't outwardly promote their Asian or Chinese related events. However, lucky for me, my mom was a Chinese librarian who worked at Haggard for almost 20 years! After reading about the growth and expansion of the Plano libraries in Twenty First Century Gateways, I put two-and-two together and figured that my mom probably knows a lot more detail about the programs.

I really enjoyed my conversation with her. I learned so much more about her work life before she retired and how stressful it was for her. Interviewing and talking to my mom about the work she brought to the community brings a more human aspect to the research compared to the more stoic interview conducted in Twenty First Century Gateways.

Turns out, many of the events and programs that the Twenty First Century Gateways had discussed started with my mom, Dongxiao Zhu. Zhu has a masters in Library Science and English as a Chinese native who immigrated to OK to further her education with her husband. As she is bilingual, this made her the perfect candidate to start Chinese storytime with a bilingual version. However, the bilingual version ended up dying as the years went as less and less people attended. Zhu was actually pretty against it as she did not see a reason for there to be a bilingual story time. The Chinese parents who bring their kids usually are the ones who can't understand English while their kids are fluent and speak it everywhere outside of the house. However, Chinese story time that she started as well was incredibly popular and still continues til this day.

Other benchmarks Zhu helped make are:

Haggard Library nowadays doesn't outwardly promote their Asian or Chinese related events. However, lucky for me, my mom was a Chinese librarian who worked at Haggard for almost 20 years! After reading about the growth and expansion of the Plano libraries in Twenty First Century Gateways, I put two-and-two together and figured that my mom probably knows a lot more detail about the programs.

I struggled a lot with this portion. I knew I wanted to utilize the photos that I had to represent the place to people who had never been there before, but I was really struggling. Much of my struggle came from not knowing how to use the photos I had in the “right way,” but after just look at all the types of assets I could create from the photos I had, I thumbnailed some ideas out, and they ended up sticking pretty well. I had the most struggle with the Sugarpine layout, but it eventually got to a point that I was happy with.

I also got a chance to mess around more in Photoshop which was nice since I don't have too much experience with Photoshop and combining that with InDesign and Procreate. I had fun digitally collaging and figuring out where things needed to go and writing about these places because I'm pretty passionate about these spots in particular.