Finally, this is the completed publication, presented in both English and Romanian versions. In the gallery below, each spread is shown as it appears when photographed. The publication measures 6.4 x 5.8 inches and is housed in a thicker cardboard box. The box also indicates which language version the viewer is holding, clearly distinguishing between the English and Romanian editions. Pictured below is the English version.
This portion of the project felt somewhat like a side project, as it was not entirely centred on graphic design itself. Instead, it became a way for me to step away briefly, recalibrate, and spend time engaging more directly with the inspirations behind the work while also celebrating the visual language I had been exploring throughout the project.
The piece itself is relatively small and takes the form of a crocheted work inspired by filet crochet techniques. In an ideal scenario, I would have liked to create the entire publication using this handmade approach, as I felt it would have connected even more strongly to the themes of domestic craft, nostalgia, and cultural memory present within the project. However, I quickly realised that such a process would be extremely time-consuming, and due to the time constraints I was working within, it was ultimately not feasible. Even so, creating this piece allowed me to experiment materially with the project’s core inspirations in a more personal and tactile way.
I scanned the piece so that its details and texture could be clearly captured and translated into a digital format. I think the result preserves the qualities of the original work quite effectively, and it has come out looking visually strong.
For this piece, I wanted to continue incorporating the visual language of the doily and lace aesthetic. Initially, however, I was unsure how to achieve this effectively. I began experimenting with the crochet thread I had been using for previous textile pieces, attempting to crochet directly around the edges of test prints.
While these experiments were interesting, I quickly realised that the technique created too much unnecessary bulk. The outcome felt visually distracting and did not achieve the delicate quality I wanted for the project. As a result, although the tests were valuable in helping me explore different possibilities, I ultimately decided not to continue with that approach and instead moved on to other methods.
Moving forward, I became interested in using a Cricut machine, a device capable of cutting vector-based designs into physical materials such as paper or vinyl. I began by experimenting with the machine using standard printer paper so that I could better understand how detailed and delicate the cuts could be in terms of scale and precision.
After these initial tests, I moved on to experimenting with thicker paper stock, specifically the 210 GSM paper that I intended to use for the final publication. This also proved successful and allowed me to achieve the level of detail I was aiming for. Ultimately, I chose the design shown next to this section, as it was the smallest and most delicate of the variations, yet it created the strongest visual impact and most effectively conveyed the lace-like aesthetic I wanted for the project.
I wanted the title page to feature cut-out typography similar to the lace-inspired designs used around the edges of the publication. To achieve this, I spent time experimenting with the small connecting tabs required to hold the letters in place and prevent the text from falling apart once cut. This process involved a considerable amount of trial and error, particularly when testing how different paper types responded to the cutting process.
I also needed to make several adjustments to the cutting settings to ensure the machine produced clean and accurate results. However, this ultimately proved less difficult than I had initially anticipated. Once I had measured and aligned the print correctly, I was able to move forward confidently with producing the final version on the official paper stock.
For this project, I wanted to take the responses gathered from the previous work and develop them into something that could present these stories in an aesthetic and meaningful way. I spent time considering the visual language of the project and how it could communicate a sense of nostalgia and cultural memory.
I was deeply inspired by the work of Simona Bortis-Schultz, particularly her book To Hold Your Heart in Your Teeth: Women’s Work. In this publication, she uses symbolism and material references to evoke the appearance and emotional significance of the traditional Romanian blouse, which is the central subject of her work. Inspired by this approach, I wanted to create something that carried a similarly representative visual identity.
What I ultimately drew from was the imagery of traditional doilies commonly found throughout many post-communist countries and especially within Romanian homes. These decorative textiles were often placed on top of televisions and household furniture, becoming both a familiar domestic object and, over time, a kind of visual meme within Romanian culture. I wanted to reference this shared cultural memory by incorporating visual and textural elements inspired by the doily itself. I also approached the physical construction of the publication playfully, cutting the edges in a way that echoed the appearance of a table runner or decorative lace doily.
The publication was produced in two versions that were visually almost identical and shared the same overall visual language, differing only in the language used for the written text. The original version was created in Romanian, as this was the primary audience and cultural context of the project. However, I also developed an English version in order to make the work more accessible to people who interact with the project but are not Romanian or do not speak the language.
I used a combination of photos taken by me and the participant Anna who actually provided photos of her dog and of herself as a child and a piece of fibre art that I created for the actual project. So all of the photos used are actually taken by me or my participant Anna. The piece that is seen on the black spread is actually a piece that I created and you can find more information on in this blog post.
Below you can find spreads from both publications.
ROMANIAN
ENGLISH
After discussing the project with my friends, I wanted to ensure that the posters were placed in spaces that would properly contextualise the topic they address, while also giving people the opportunity to actively engage with it. We realised that the most appropriate setting for presenting these posters would be Romanian shops and bakeries, so we organised a day trip to several areas with a strong presence of Romanian-owned businesses. Due to the tight deadline, we were not able to photograph every poster in its place, but the examples we documented are shown below.
This experience also gave me the opportunity to speak with shopkeepers, managers, and members of the Romanian community who were deeply proud of the businesses they had established in the UK. Many of the people who owned these shops were Romanian immigrants who had spent over twenty years building their lives in this country. They were particularly moved by the topic of my project and by the fact that it aimed both to commemorate and celebrate the sense of longing they continue to feel for home. Several people told me directly that they intended to respond to the question posed by the project themselves, or at the very least spend time reflecting on it.
I explained briefly how the website could be accessed through the QR code on the posters, and many of them said they would encourage their customers to interact with the project in the coming days. Although I was not entirely certain how much engagement the project would ultimately receive, what felt most meaningful to me was the opportunity to connect with members of my community in such a positive and personal way. It was also rewarding to provide a design piece that many of the shop owners considered genuinely meaningful. Several of them were excited to display the posters in their shops and expressed enthusiasm about both the concept and the project as a whole.
The posters themselves became an important exercise in experimentation and visual communication. I wanted them to be eye-catching and accessible to a wide audience, particularly Romanian people of different ages who might encounter and engage with the work. To attract attention, I relied on bold colours and strong graphic compositions. Many of the designs incorporated colours from the Romanian flag, and I intentionally worked within a red, yellow, and blue palette, balanced with black and white for contrast.
These choices were made not only to create visually striking posters, but also to encourage curiosity and invite interaction. Many of the designs also carried a sense of playfulness, which helped make the project feel more approachable and engaging. I was able to reuse and adapt several graphic elements from the earlier booklet project, experimenting further with shapes, layouts, and colour combinations. Overall, the posters felt like a successful continuation of that visual language, and they became a body of work that I was proud to present publicly.
Below you can find a gallery of all the posters designed to advertise this Projection.
In order to advertise this project it was important to me to find a way to playfully integrate participants. While those who submitted work towards the finished website were anonymous, for the design of posters I recruited people I knew. Participants were invited to take part in a series of small, informal sit-down sessions during which they were encouraged to contribute fragments of personal memory through both drawings and written reflections. These ‘workshops’ were conceived as intimate and collaborative encounters, allowing participants to engage with the project in a manner that was both personal and self-directed. Rather than positioning participants solely as respondents, the process aimed to involve them more actively in the shaping of the project’s visual and emotional language.
Many participants expressed a desire to contribute to the design process itself, influencing the aesthetic direction of the work through their individual responses and visual marks. In recognition of the personal value attached to these contributions, participants were allowed to keep their completed booklets after they had been digitally scanned and archived. As a result, no physical copies remain available for flip-through documentation. This decision reflects the project’s emphasis on memory as something deeply personal, transient, and owned by those who experienced it.
Small A6 design was chosen due to the easy of filling out, a smaller page seeming less daunting to participants.
The visual design language of the booklet draws heavily from Romanian branding, particularly the graphic styles associated with traditional products, local shops, and everyday commercial imagery. These references were incorporated to bring familiarity and a sense of nostalgia.
I want to continue my exploration of residual experiences within the UK by focusing on a particular emotional condition often experienced by Romanian immigrants. While I recognise that migration is both profoundly intimate and highly varied, it also produces shared experiences across individuals. One of the most significant similarities are the sense of longing that persists regardless of how, when, or why someone left their country of origin. To some extent, many immigrants miss aspects of what they consider “home.”
This project seeks to investigate that feeling more deeply. To do so, I designed a website centred around a single question, conceived as a simple inquiry into people’s memories, emotions, and everyday experiences. This is the question:
“De ce îți este cel mai dor de acasă? Exprimă ce înseamnă dorul pentru tine.
What do you miss the most from home? Express what ‘dor’ is to you.“
The website does not request personal information, names, or any form of identification; rather, it functions as an anonymous space for collecting and presenting these reflections. By bringing these memories together, the project aims to reveal a shared sense of solidarity embedded within the experience of leaving home and living elsewhere.
Below is a showcase of the website, along with selected responses. The website is simple but effective. The decorations are from previous participants who filled out the booklets and can be interacted with by the person on the website curently. Moving the elements on one device remotely moves it on someone elses as well.
Additional contributions can be accessed through the following link.
Through my initial experimentation with questionnaires and gaining a glimpse into people’s lives, I was able to identify a direction for my work. This direction developed further through my engagement with Matei Bejenaru’s work and his own exploration of illegal immigration and the position of the immigrant as a mere transported individual, without addressing the deeper intricacy of experiencing moving away from one’s own country for a better life.
What this engagement offered me was the opportunity to think about the intricacies and differences between immigration and being an immigrant. Immigration is a process, while being an immigrant is an identity that continues long after the process itself has ended.
Visually and conceptually, I struggled to bring together the ideas I was exploring. I found it challenging to connect my intention of engaging both an English and a Romanian audience, as each held very different perspectives on what it means to be a Romanian immigrant. Through discussions, I learned that many people actually perceive being a Romanian immigrant in ways that are closer to Western European experiences, in that form, many perceive that the Romanian immigrant has experienced a linear, direct experience.
While I acknowledge that as Europeans we benefit from certain privileges, such as the ability to come to this country legally, this does not erase the strong preconceptions that exist about Romanians. These stereotypes can significantly shape how we experience the world and particularly how the world sees us.
The most important result of this triangulation has been the realisation that I need to acknowledge the difference in audiences. I must decide whether I want my work to resonate with Romanians themselves or to explain the Romanian experience to outsiders. What I initially thought could be achieved within a single project may, in fact, need to be developed as two separate pieces of work.
Moving forward, I want to recognise that the stories I am gathering are not just quotations or data points. They represent my active listening, editing, and compiling of people’s lived experiences. As a designer and representative of this work, I carry the challenge and responsibility of creating a piece that engages audiences meaningfully and respectfully.
In the next stage, I aim to incorporate more of my own language and Romanian heritage into the project. I also plan to engage more directly with people through interviews. While the questionnaires were a valuable way to gather general insights, I now want to move toward more personal and in-depth forms of storytelling.
Ultimately, I see this project as an evolving conversation between identity, perception, and representation. It is not only about presenting Romanian voices but also about questioning how these voices are received, framed, and interpreted in different cultural contexts. By allowing the work to remain open and responsive, I hope to create space for dialogue rather than resolution, and to let the stories shape the form the project eventually takes.
My work for this year aims to explore a closer more personal understanding of immigrant experience as expressed and represented by fellow Romanian immigrants. The majority of the content for this project comes through the use of a questionnaire which was distributed through Romanian immigrant groups and by word of mouth through family and friends. What my project does not aim to do is to interrogate the people on the way that they immigrated to this country nor on their experience through bureaucracy or the process of moving from a country to another on a purely physical basis. Instead my biggest aim was to humanize and highlight what it feels like to be away from home and while I do not deny that this experience is universal for most immigrants. I wanted to address it from the perspective of a group of people that have a similar beginning to me.
The reference chosen is Travel Guide (2005-2007) by Matei Bejenaru. This project is an analytical look at the process of immigration and illegal immigration within the mid 2000’s, presenting both an installation and a booklet that viewers can walk away with. The work covers the process of illegally immigrating from Romania to the UK and is visually represented in the format similar to that of transport for London’s. Bejenaru aims to highlight how many steps the Romanian immigrant has to take before entering the UK and the risks taken on their journey to a better life. This installation was created before Romania became part of the EU, so it was at a point when crossing the border from Romania to Hungary was precarious and risky if not in possession of the correct paperwork.
This was a time where, due to the fairly recent fall of communism, many Romanians were seeking a better life for themselves outside of the country. The document that Bejenaru provides begins by stating that: “If you want to go to Great Britain or Ireland and you have no chance of getting a Visa from the Bucharest embassies [sic] of these countries, you must carefully size up the chances you take when you decide to cross the border without having the legal papers.” The document itself acts as a step-by-step guide and explains in depth what routes to take, what options you have and what risks you are taking by entering the country. The reference itself represented a time in history where people felt the need to escape the country but were unable to go through the legal channels to do so. This illegal process of immigration has diminished as people are able to enter the country legally, though this does not erase the fact that this is a reality for many Romanians seeking a better life.
Presently, work about Romanian immigration is scarce and oftentimes does not really delve into the emotional experience itself. It is important to me therefore to explain why the reference in question has been chosen. Many may identify the fact both projects explore immigration and state that the reference and my project are not dissimilar. Due to this misunderstanding of the nature of my work they believe that because both cover immigration they are therefore the same. While I do not deny the similarity in root of both projects, their approaches are different. I aim to make people understand that immigration and an immigrant are different things, even if they are intrinsically related.
In contrast to my work, Bejenaru’s project is technical, detail oriented and does not use the immigrant’s emotions or experiences as necessarily the main focus of his work. The immigrant is anonymous, it could be you, the reader or a nameless third party; Instead of the main focus of this work being illegal immigration and the process of it, the subject of crossing borders is not necessarily the focus, rather leaving this event behind in lieu of how the identity of immigrant can impact people.
Unlike Travel Guide, which provides its audience with a structured, almost bureaucratic depiction of migration routes, my project privileges the unstructured, the intimate, and the subjective. The anonymity that defines Bejenaru’s immigrants is replaced here by a multiplicity of voices that resist reduction to data or procedure. Rather than mapping borders, my work maps feelings. Though also not specifically identifying my participants by name, my work seeks to create a well rounded representation of who they are, what they enjoy and what they want you, the reader, to take away.
Through visual representations of my inquiry, my project takes a more introspective and emotional approach to the subject of Romanian immigrants’ experiences and their feelings regarding their current life. While Bejenaru’s Travel Guide operates in the realm of documentation and social commentary, my work situates itself in the affective and interpersonal. I am interested in how displacement manifests not only as a geographical or legal transition but as a deeply personal reconfiguration of self. By collecting testimonies through a questionnaire circulated among Romanian immigrants, I aim to construct a collective emotional landscape: one that captures the nuances of longing, adaptation, and nostalgia that accompany life away from home. These answers will aid in moving forward with the physical development of this project, becoming the source and representation of the inquiry I am hoping to address.
In conclusion, my project seeks to bridge the gap between the historical and emotional dimensions of Romanian immigration, offering a counterpoint to Matei Bejenaru’s Travel Guide by shifting the focus from procedure to personal experience. While his work captures a specific historical moment marked by risk, uncertainty, and the pursuit of opportunity, my project captures what follows: the quieter, ongoing experience of living elsewhere and carrying home within. It is less about the act of crossing a border and more about what happens after, when one begins to inhabit a new language, culture, and rhythm of life. Through the voices gathered in my questionnaire, I hope to present an image of Romanian immigrants not defined by statistics or legality, but by sentiment, memory, and resilience. These narratives reveal the complexity of belonging, how it can stretch across geographies, linger in language, and persist through loss. Ultimately, my work invites reflection on what it means to exist between places, to be both here and there, and to find meaning in that in-between space. In doing so, it extends the conversation that Bejenaru began, transforming it from a story of movement into a meditation on emotion, connection, and identity.