The 2020 application season is in full swing. Although the application situation has experienced twists and turns this year, the harvest season is coming. Natural light has recently received many good results. Many students have received nearly 10 offers from Britain, Australia and the United States! Today, Xingyu, the student we interviewed, not only took the lead in obtaining offers from three top schools, including Parsons Visual Communication, Pratt Art School Visual Communication, and California Institute of Arts CCA, but also won a large scholarship of 670000! Among them, Parsons scholarship is 250000 yuan, CCA scholarship is 420000 yuan!
Two months of intensive training set up the basic framework, 16 hours of online tutoring with jet lag reversed day and night, and five interdisciplinary projects integrated music, poetry, pure art What helped Xingyu to complete his dream was a solid professional foundation, a high degree of trust between teachers and students, customized course guidance, and his persistence and self-discipline!
Parsons Visual Communication Application Experience:
Xingyu applied for Parsons Visual Communication as a transfer student. Before coming to Natural Light, he had already studied art courses systematically in a university in the United States. His overseas learning experience helped him develop his ability to learn independently, and also made him more certain of his love for graphic design. This time, he had a face-to-face class in natural light for only two months, and the rest of the time was through the 16 hour time difference online communication with the teacher. This time, Xingyu was also interviewed by us late at night in American time, but he still explained his learning experience and application experience to us in detail, and also gave some suggestions to the students. In this interview, we can feel Xingyu's strict self-discipline and gratitude to his teachers, and it is worthy of being able to receive award offers from three famous schools first! Next, let's take a look at Xingyu's experience of Parsons' visual communication application~
1. 2 months of intensive training to build a basic framework
Xingyu: I have been studying in the United States and systematically studied art and design courses. Because I like art very much and feel that I have some advantages in language and professional thinking, I hope to go to a better university to realize my artistic dream.
I found the natural light when I returned home from the summer vacation. At that time, my first impression was very good. I communicated with professional teachers. The curriculum planning and school selection were very smooth. But because I only had two months of summer vacation and had to go back to the United States, I stayed here to have face-to-face classes with teachers for a short time, and I was worried at the beginning.

The professional teacher's impression of Xingyu's classmates is that he is a big boy with strong autonomy and enthusiasm for art. In addition, in the process of communication, the teacher learned that because of the difference in basic art education at home and abroad, Xingyu He is weak in hand painting, which is a very important foundation for the plane visual communication design specialty he wants to apply for, so he is still nervous in time planning.
Therefore, the teacher has formulated a full "60 day training plan" for Xingyu, which includes humanistic thinking, hand drawing exercises, software improvement, creative sketching classes, etc. At this stage, the teacher did not rush Xingyu to carry out Portfolio training The creation of the project is to hope that Xingyu can make up for its weaknesses, carry forward its strengths and establish a more solid basic framework. The intensive curriculum arrangement in the early stage also established a profound "revolutionary emotion" between teachers and students. This mutual trust and understanding laid a solid foundation for the later remote tutoring.
2. Customized courses help create personalized works
Xingyu: After the completion of the two month course plan, what I feel most is that my hand painting ability has been greatly improved, which also helps me to have more directions in the selection of subsequent projects. Then, before returning to China, I also worked with my teacher to formulate the next curriculum plan, which basically revolved around the project of Parsons' visual communication works. Anyway, the task was quite heavy. And because there is a 16 hour time difference with the teacher, the teacher often hurries to get up early to give me lessons. If I have any questions, I send WeChat messages to him in time, and I feel that he is particularly responsible throughout the learning process.

There are 5 projects in my work collection, and basically each project combines some knowledge of other professional fields. The first completed project is a product packaging design, inspired by my favorite food - hot pot. Because in the United States, it is a very ritual thing for Chinese people to eat hot pot together. In most cases, we buy hot pot ingredients and make them ourselves. But also because there are very few kinds of hot pot ingredients that can be found in foreign countries, the packaging is almost the same from the appearance.
So I want to design a hot pot primer packaging that can match "strong connotation". My product positioning is a high-end brand, and I hope that with the help of sophisticated visual design, more people can understand that hot pot represents a profound humanistic connotation.
Xingyu's courses after returning to the United States are centered around projects with concentrated works, which are conducted in the form of online class+independent creation+scheme discussion+feedback. Because there is a time difference of more than half a day between the teacher and me, the whole learning process is basically black and white reversed to discuss the plan together. Therefore, the sense of trust established in the early stage and the ability of students to learn independently are also particularly important. Although there were some twists and turns during the period, after the efforts of both sides, the final learning results exceeded everyone's expectations.
3. Cross border - product, pure art, music, poetry
Xingyu: The second item in my work collection borrows the expression of pure art. I create a visual sense of expressing abstract emotions by drawing different movements of human body parts, such as head, hands and legs, combined with colorful background and exaggerated dynamic processing. Another project is my favorite piano music, Kiss The Rain. I selected a poem describing this music, divided it into five parts, and created a series of "three-dimensional poems" to convey the artistic conception.
Xingyu's other projects also focus on "interdisciplinary" and "personalized expression". But in fact, during the creation process of this project, Xingyu has also been involved in a huge entanglement. One reason is that she is not confident in her hand painting ability, and the other reason is that she cannot find an accurate expression. And we also know that the creation process of pure art is "self". Once you get stuck in the creation bottleneck, the teacher, as a tutor, is actually difficult to give substantive help. So in this process, after repeated communication, attempts and psychological construction, the teacher and Xingyu finally chose this relatively "simple" but more sensory impact hand painting expression, which also became the most Xingyu style works in the whole set of Parsons' visual communication works.
4. Thanks for the most powerful support when encountering bottlenecks
Xingyu: In the whole creation process of Parsons' visual communication works collection, the biggest challenge I faced came from Parsons Challenge, which is the independent proposition in Parsons' enrollment requirements. Because I spent a lot of time and energy preparing the portfolio project in the early stage, the time left for independent proposition has been very little. The huge pressure in the sprint stage also made me lose direction for a while, and I don't know where to start.
During this period, the teacher, with his rich experience, made rational analysis for me and gave me a lot of confidence. On the basis of comprehensive consideration, I chose the recreation of music elements in the works, designed a three-dimensional music score, and tried to element each note as much as possible to explore different dimensions of thinking.
Parsons Parsons School of Design For most applicants in the art and design professional direction, they are required to re create a new visual work based on a theme of the submitted works. The theme is unlimited.
The professional teacher explained that the focus of the Parsons Challenge investigation was the students' thinking ability and various forms of creative expression. These two points were also what Xingyu was good at. He believed that as long as he thought calmly, he would find the best solution.
In fact, Xingyu also successfully completed the final challenge, and finally received the first batch of visual communication offers from Parsons, and won a high scholarship of $9000 per year!
At the end of our interview, When asked about Xingyu's own feelings, he also said: "Because the natural light teacher has rich experience and helped me avoid many detours in the creation process, I am also very grateful to them. Then I also want to give some advice to the following students: Don't imitate too much, stick to yourself in the creation process, and refer to professional teachers' opinions when encountering problems!" 。
In the application process of Xingyu's Parsons' visual communication specialty, we saw that his seemingly "lucky" application process was not smooth. During this period, it was inseparable from the students' own super autonomy, perfect cooperation with teachers and customized curriculum assistance. As Xingyu repeatedly emphasizes "personalized expression", this is also the fundamental reason why Natural Light has always resolutely resisted the act of acting and rejected template teaching. What we hope to cultivate is not only the promotion of "professional ability" in a single dimension, but also the improvement of works with basis, consciousness and direction, to effectively ensure the review and teaching and research process, to ensure the application results in an all-round way, and to realize each student's "customized future"!
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