Yu Ling

When Yu Ling came to Parsons, she felt unsure that she was enough of an artist. But The New School challenged her to explore diverse interests and care deeply about her studies. In her Artist’s Books class at Parsons, she learned much more than bookbinding. She discovered her love of working with her hands and designing things digitally, realizing that books could be an art form and the perfect medium to combine her interests.

Yu Ling has become something of a master of combining: She’s an Integrated Design major at Parsons, and a Theater major with a minor in Ethnicity and Race at Eugene Lang School of Liberal Arts, a blend made possible by the university’s BA/BFA program. At Lang, she’d been inspired by a course to consider political systems, oppression, and social justice; and at Parsons, she learned to ask herself why she was creating something. It led her to create a booklet titled “How the F*ck to Vote.”. Designed to strip the “political jargon” out of election information, the book clarifies the voting process in snappy, approachable language, graphic design, and Yu Ling’s signature humor. “It’s one of the projects that I’m most proud of,” she says. “The New School has enabled me to see the world differently. What I’m making now is unlike anything I ever imagined making. I feel like I found who I am and who I want to be.”