Ava Lang
byavalang.comAva Lang is a multidisciplinary designer with an interest in branding and typography. Ava’s design work has been largely influenced by her lived experience as an Asian American woman, particularly as a second-generation immigrant. She’s interested in further uncovering the nuances of her own identity as well as those in her immediate family. She has become super interested in how migration affects the family structure, especially in terms of language and emotion. Throughout her studies at USF, she has gained lenses that allow for the confrontation of concepts around identity, which have continually emerged as major questions throughout the course of her Life.
What Does it Cost to Dream?
What Does it Cost to Dream? is a publication about the ways that migration fundamentally and
continually shifts the structure of a family and its dynamics. Conceptually, the book is grounded
in the idea that frequently, women are the ones who are expected to shoulder the emotional cost
of migration. The story functions as a chance to view how these expectations have directly
affected my mother and grandmother. My intention was to visually demonstrate the continually
shifting ideas around identity, and how the women in my life have frequently felt as though their
inner lives were unable to be fully understood or translated. There are hopes, dreams, and
longings that have gone unsaid and been locked away; my goal has been to uncover them.
The publication deals with themes of assimilation, diaspora, language, reimagining stories, and
conceptions of the American dream. I decided to arrange the book through these sections in order
to mirror this kind of roadmap of my understanding and visualization of the varying costs of
migration in both my personal life and, at large, in the world.