My early education in design, rooted in a Bauhaus-influenced system, emphasized clarity, utility, and serving the needs of a client. Design, I was taught, was not personal; it was functional. The aesthetic decisions and narratives in my early work were often dictated by external expectations.

Pursuing an MFA in Illustration Practice shifted my perspective. I found myself in an environment where personal narrative wasn’t just permitted: it was central. This led me to confront a question I had never asked before: What happens when I turn my gaze inward and begin to illustrate my own memories, not as fleeting sketches, but as deliberate, structured narratives?

My thesis project, Finding Emo, explores how personal memory can serve as a narrative framework in illustration. This paper reflects on the ways in which personal archives and our emotional histories can be used to construct visual narratives that are both introspective and universal.