Jason Liu


Jason Liu is an award-winning designer with eight years of experience creating culture-shifting brands around the world.

His work has been shown at the Grammys, Good Morning America, the New York Times, and CNN. Jason is also an exhibited visual artist and published photographer.

Jason is based in Brooklyn by way of DC, LA, Shanghai, and Michigan. He attended the University of Southern California, where he majored in Urban Planning and minored in Architecture.

More about Jason


 Projects
01     The Labor Force
02    AIGA DC Design Week
03    Amnesty USA
 04    Helena
05    Cinema United
06    Personal Work
Ask me about living in Shanghai as a kid, Mac Miller’s discography, postmodern architecture, airline liveries, and basketball.
 New York 
  Los Angeles
  Shanghai


A Versatile Brand Kit for DC Design Week

 Scope: Identity, Brand Toolkit, Brand Templates
Agency: Teal Media, 2024
Creative Direction:  Kela Lester, J’Nay Penn, Aruna Mall
Art Direction: Ellen Yee

DC Design Week is AIGA DC’s annual flagship event. Each fall, hundreds of creatives around the DMV participate in design talks, portfolio critiques, studio tours, and parties located all over the city. Teal Media is AIGA DC’s brand partner. 
As lead designer, I created two brand concepts for DCDW 2024. The final product was a brand toolkit that the client would apply on their own across all touchpoints, including a website, event graphics, physical signage, and merch. 






Centering the Creativity Process


 The theme, “Stories Within” served as the north star for the project. AIGA DC pitched us a vision of an inclusive experience that showcased the creative process authentically in all of its forms, quirks, and possibilities.  They also needed the brand to work across Figma, Adobe, and Google design products.



Two Concepts, Two Stories

We created two concepts that visually expressed DC Design Week’s event theme and accounted for all the different points and methods within the creative process.




Engineering the Toolkit
The selected concept featured Instrument Serif—a Google Font derivative of Editorial New. Though it now carries associations to the current administration and the tech sector, at the time it was seen as fresh, organic, and on-trend—perfect for a one-off design event.

This brand system is anchored by an underline mark between ‘Stories’ and ‘Within’. The negative space serves as a container for all the different ways we create. 

As we were building out the selected concept, Ellen and I needed to ensure that the visual language was versatile enough for these applications within the rules we were setting.  

I paired Instrument Serif with Manrope, an open-source geometric sans. The precise, elegant serif, when paired with a approachable, rounded sans intentionally ties back to the inclusive vision of DCDW’24.







We selected a cream and dark grey as the primary palettes. They served as the foundational canvas for the toolkit, but added just enough personality to hold up when elements were layered on top. A varied secondary palette encapsulates all the different paths we take along the creative process.



We also made sure to offer as many accessible type and color combinations as possible. Throughout the process, I reminded myself that this is a one-off brand—we want the team to go wild.





With the foundational elements of the brand set, I brought in a library of textures and squiggles to add visual depth and richness. These elements are the sprinkles, the icing, and the cherry on the cake, giving the team a vast amount of possible variations when image-making.

We envisioned a rollout where the AIGA DC would introduce the event with restrained treatments focused around the logo & color, and gradually bring in more textures and squiggles to build excitement as the week approached. 



I made example graphics and a templated slide deck to demonstrate how these elements came together.



Here’s some of the final designs. The team said they loved playing with the brand! Designing a successful brand for use by a team of creatives felt validating in a way I hadn’t previously felt with clients. I was delighted by the way they took our toolkit and pushed the look.

As we witness a swing back towards organic styles, analog media, and getting offline, I’m grateful to Kela and J’Nay for coming up with a creative direction ahead of its time.


Experiencing DC Design Week 2024
The event was a big success! Aruna Mall, the Chief Creative Officer of Teal Media, joined me for the week. We toured NASA’s Earth Information Center, considered opposing viewpoints at an AI debate hosted by Howard University, and listened to Cheryl Miller give a moving career retrospective as she kicked off her book tour in her hometown. I also met one of my type idols, Tré Seals of Vocal Type!

A year later, AIGA DC returned to Teal Media for the next DC Design Week brand. Dustin Maciag and Madie Graham designed the identity for DCDW 2025. You can read about it here.