Jemma Young

Communication Design

Hello, I am Jemma Young. I am a graphic and communications designer with a specialisation in publication design, UX design, and brand development. My industry background spans over five years, encompassing experiences as both a freelance designer and as the Design and Communications Coordinator at an Organisational Psychology firm in Perth, WA.

I possess a deep-seated enthusiasm for the art of storytelling and the transformative power of well-considered design. My motivation is fuelled by an unwavering commitment to pursuing excellence, delving into the underlying motivations that drive overarching goals, and a relentless dedication to continuous improvement.

I harbor a profound sense of social responsibility and a keen sense of justice, making me particularly passionate about employing storytelling and empathetic design to shift perspectives.

Mission:

To harness the innate capacity of design to connect, empower, and resonate.

To use design as a conduit through which individuals, social causes, organisations, and communities can find their authentic voice.

To create designs that function as bridges, uniting disparate elements into harmonious compositions that echo with purpose and meaning.

To tread softly within the environment through sustainable and well considered design outcomes.

Pulse

Pulse is a website that endeavours to provide an engaging online space for the Perth LGBTQIA+ community. Developed in response to the lack of cohesion in the way events, groups, sports, and resources were circulated online, Pulse strives to enhance well-being by integrating multiple touch-points into one location. In doing so, Pulse provides a unique way to connect with others, source information and support, and stay on top of the dynamic Perth LGBTQIA+ social scene.

UMA App

Uma is a recipe-sharing and cataloguing platform that allows users to view, search, share, organise and create recipes and recipe-related content. Importantly, Uma’s intent was to inject the ‘fun’ back into sharing content online, drawing the focus back to the neutral territory of cooking, food, and invention. Uma is inspiration, an outlet for creativity, and a platform to share original recipe posts or posts of homemade creations.

Weightless Album

Weightless by Marconi Union is considered the world’s most relaxing song. The redesign of the Weightless album used digital collage to convey the unique elements of the album, while speaking directly to the artists’ compositional approach. The album’s design also deliberately appears gender and age-neutral, and instead, focuses on communicating the same sense of weightless ease, a portal to a state of calm and relaxation, as the music it enfolds.

Resilience

Resilience was developed as part of a collection of digital compositions and drawing inspiration from fashion images. Just as clothes are scrunched up and folded out again, like paper, so too are we as humans. If we were to unfold ourselves like paper, every crease would be representative of a challenge overcome, a success, a failure, a love won or lost. Experiences that are each so entwined with the human experience.

Gravity Campaign

Developed in response to the loneliness epidemic that came to light at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Gravity Campaign sought to educate at a community level, while empowering individuals to identify barriers contributing to their experience of loneliness. Additionally, the Gravity Program linked to the campaign sought to help individuals build resiliency (an evidence-backed approach to improving connection) through mindfulness, self-compassion and gratitude training over their daily cup of tea or coffee.

Acknowledgement of Country

The School of Design and Architecture respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners and knowledge-keepers of the lands, waters and sky that surround us, where we work, learn, create, communicate and make place. We recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded and this always was and will always be Wurundjeri Country. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who continue to make a better world through design.

We extend our acknowledgement to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, alumni, real-life clients, and knowledge keepers, who have contributed to our own education diversity and growth. We will continue to ensure that staff and students respectfully honour ancestral connection to Country and Place in everything that they do.

We are dedicated to the notion of design to make a better world and we acknowledge that making tools, shaping place, sharing stories, making meaning, wayfinding and collaborating have long been and continue to be both central and integral to First Peoples' cultures. We recognize that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ cultural contributions have continued relevance to design practice and commit to: reconciling ancestries of design and contemporary practice as well as pursuing culturally and professionally appropriate ways to engage with a diverse population of colleagues, industries and clients. In a time of treaty-making and voice we understand that there are overlaps between caring for Country and the sustainable production of goods, services, experiences, products and buildings.

Guided by the principles of respect, reconciliation, and reciprocity we undertake to indigenising and decolonising design practice by dismantling colonial structures and challenging biases that have marginalised Indigenous voices and design.

As students of SoDA you will be given opportunities to both engage with and educate yourself in Indigenous creative practices and cultural protocols through a lens of inclusivity, diversity, respect, mutual understanding, inter-cultural dialogue in all aspects of design practice. Indigenous people have been telling stories, making tools, and connecting to Country through visual media, placemaking and place marking for more than 60,000 years and these practices are part of an ongoing, evolving and live tradition.