Pushing the right Boundaries

When the Asian Film Festival of Dallas first brought me on, their goal was clear: give the visuals a fresh take. Not just a standard promo job, but something with energy—something alive. This year marks my third with the festival, and with each round, I’ve found myself slowly but surely pushing the boundaries of what “film festival art” can look like.


In the beginning, I could’ve just dropped in stills from the films being screened and called it a day. But that never felt like enough. I wanted to go deeper—finding ways to blend original visual culture into the identity of the festival, not just reflect what was on the screen, but amplify it. So each year, I’ve introduced design elements with a nod to Asian heritage, design cues, or visual storytelling traditions.


The team at AFFD has given me that rare thing in the creative world: trust. And that trust translates into freedom. The freedom to experiment, to leap without always knowing where I’ll land, to make work that might not look like a traditional festival campaign—but feels right. Not just different for the sake of different, but different with purpose.


Creative freedom doesn’t mean no boundaries. It means knowing which boundaries to stretch, which ones to erase, and which ones to paint over with something new. And every time I get to do that with AFFD, it reminds me why I make art in the first place.