CHIAKI CHNG
LinkedIn / Email / Instagram


working on unceded Wurundjeri land/Melbourne




A____ DESIGN PORTFOLIO
1 Above Water Anthology  / Print Publication Design; Brand Identity; Photography; Illustration
2 Farrago Magazine /  Print Publication Design; Brand Identity; Creative Direction: Video/Photography; User-Generated Content; Social Media Management
3 Independent Media / Brand Identity; Campaign Design
4 Changeling / Brand Identity; Illustration
5 Ascent Academia / Brand Identity
6 Dreaming Blooms Floristry / Brand Identity; Product Design; User-Generated Content; Campaign Design; Creative Direction and Content Production; Social Media Management

B____WRITTEN PUBLICATIONS
1 All written works

C____ INFO
1 Bio
2  CV





Above Water Anthology

 Above Water Anthology is a student journal which publishes art and literature. I was commissioned to design the 2025 print cover and logo. 




PRINT PUBLICATION
BRAND IDENTITY 
PHOTOGRAPHY
ILLUSTRATION

Farrago Magazine



As 2025 social media manager and designer of the University of Melbourne’s campus magazine Farrago,  I oversaw, commissioned and produced digital content projects, as well as designing magazine spreads and promotional material for print.  

In 2025 Farrago celebrated its centenary anniversary, and this archival legacy is honoured through the sampling of design languages from bygone times. I redesigned the 2025 masthead in a blackletter typeface to pay homage to the publication’s long and varied history.

I also had the opportunity to lead a debut book launch project for a local author: this involved contacting venues and partnering organisations, producing and directing promotional features including interviews and commissioning a review, as well as designing publication assets. 

As 2026 Editor in Chief, I worked collaboratively with Maria Quartel to design the publication’s new brand identity, and with the Editorial team to facilitate student journalism and creative work. I also facilitated our collaboration with DreamWorldGirl Zine.


PRINT PUBLICATION 
LOGO DESIGN
BRAND IDENTITY
CREATIVE DIRECTION: VIDEO/PHOTOGRAPHY
USER-GENERATED CONTENT
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
EVENT TEAM MANAGEMENT









Edition Four cover design (in collaboration with Nathan Pham)
Edition Two cover design (in collaboration with Maria Quartel, Ibrahim Muan Abdulla and Tom Weir-Alarcon)

Edition Four cover shoot direction (photography by Nathan Pham)

Poster designs for Instagram
Gossip column posters
Interview, filming, video edit direction (edited by Felicity Bayne)
End-to-end video production

Independent Media


Independent Media is the student council party of which Farrago Magazine and Radio Fodder are a part, as a part of the University of Melbourne’s Student Union (UMSU).

Our 2025 campaign championed student voice, accessible creativity and a light-hearted, whimsical approach to student politics.  

Check out the website I designed here!



BRAND IDENTITY
CAMPAIGN DESIGN
WEB DESIGN /  UI/UX

Changeling

The original stage-play Changeling was performed at the 2025 Melbourne Fringe Festival, exploring topics such as disability, marginalisation and belonging. I was commissioned to design branding assets and illustrate hero imagery for the production.




BRAND IDENTITY
ILLUSTRATION


Ascent Academia


 Ascent Academia is a tuition centre located in Melbourne’s Eastern suburbs. I was commissioned by their executives to create a logo that was minimalistic, unique and true to their brand identity of success-oriented, reliable service. I constructed the logo using the angles of the letter 'A', staggering the figures to reflect the double-A in the company name, and take the shape of an upwards ascent.



BRAND IDENTITY


Dreaming Blooms 


 Dreaming Blooms is an independent floral bouquet business based in Melbourne's West. I was commissioned to redesign their logos and create new material for Instagram marketing. The visual rebranding accommodates shifts in the company's ethos and demographic targets, with a focus on feminine charm and thematic cohesion.




BRAND IDENTITY 
USER-GENERATED CONTENT/SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
PRODUCT DESIGN






PROFILES
A Magazine for Young Girls

Behind Babysammi

At The Librarian’s Desk: A Conversation with Cristina Napoleone, The Founder of TERRAIN

 INTERVIEW WITH KOPICATS: On Heritage, Hanging Out and Singapore’s ‘Weird DJ’ Epidemic

K-pop In Melbourne: A Youth Culture Persisting



REVIEWS


Concert Extravaganza: A Review of DPR’s Melbourne Show



OPINION


We Are Not Teaching Empathy




















Hi, I’m Chiaki (Chee-ah-kee). I’m a final year B-Arts student at the University of Melbourne, majoring in English Literature and Creative Writing. My design practice began at a young age, as did my love for words and community, and I have since been enamoured with pragmatic, provocative and memorable communications that serve real purposes and meet people where they are.  My interests lie with mindful, empathetic designs, commitment to concept, embodying ethos and context-focused thinking.

                   



                                                         
I’m also a big fan of talking.                
Send me an email or reach out on LinkedIn.











CV

Emerging Writers’ FestivalMarketing Intern2026
to Be Magazine Editorial Intern2026
Two Birds Talking Public Relations Intern
 2026
Farrago Magazine Editor in Chief 2026
Field Notes Communications Advisor Intern
2025
Farrago MagazineSocial Media Manager2025
Farrago Magazine Graphic Designer  2025
VCE Summer Tutoring Subject Coordinator 2025
Fraser’s Medical Graphic Designer  2024
Dreaming Blooms Floristry Graphic Designer, Social Media Marketing Intern2024
DecidEd Graphic Designer 2024
Corpus Machina Collective Costume Designer, Front of House  2024
Farrago Magazine Staff Writer - Nonfiction & Reviews 2024

SHOWS/PANELS/EVENTS/EXHIBITIONS
George Paton Gallery x un Projects: how are we listening…? Panel with Lucreccia Quintanilla & Hayden Ryan
Event Host
Emerging Writer’s Festival 2025: Young Voices, Big Stories with Kayla Morton
Workshop Assistant
Those Who Burn the Brightest: Book Launch with Kayla Morton
Producer, Event Lead, Marketing Lead
Melbourne Fringe Festival 2025: Changeling
Graphic Designer and Illustrator
TRANCE Exhibition 2025 at Changing Room Gallery
Exhibiting Artist: Mixed Media
Adelaide Fringe Festival 2024: Icarus
Costume Designer and Front of House

EDUCATION
University of Melbourne Bachelor of Arts (English & Theatre Studies/Creative Writing)2026





































At The Librarian’s Desk: A Conversation with Cristina Napoleone, The Founder of TERRAIN



Originally published in Farrago Magazine


Originally planning to speak to an ‘expert’ at random, I visit on a random Sunday—not expecting for Cristina herself to be behind the counter. With earnest excitement, she says the timing is perfect: Recently released is her guest podcast on Camille Allen’s I Want Your Job podcast, so the script is rehearsed and ready to go.

To step inside Terrain is to step through a silver door and onto a deep electric-blue floor. A rough, rock-like finish covers the walls of the store, painted with a wash of cold white paint. Sheets of matte aluminum are cut into blob-like organic shapes—a motif integrated into the shelves on the walls, the benches in the centre of the room and the counter. Atop the bench sits a Monstera plant, propagated into a wide glass vase.

To start, Cristina tells me what she told Camille—that her project was fortified over four years of local rejection, then hit a turning point when she was referred to an investor whilst working in Berkeley, California as a UniMelb exchange student.
“The guys I was working with were basically like, we've just lined you up with a meeting with our philanthropy partners next week—tell them what you told us. I was like, oh my god, shut the front door… then put together what was a very slapdash pitch. Luckily I had years worth of failed pitches on my computer…”

“Almost like your research process,” I offer.

“Like research! Every time it gets rejected, you’ve then created this edited piece of writing that’s forced you to think or critique it. So it’s refinement as you go. And I guess when I got to that time I was pretty sure of where it was, and they just understood it and said, Australia really needs that. Here’s the money. Which was crazy.”

Cristina says that for this to all happen in her twenties is a miracle, and marvels at how her once-crazy journey now looks like young people entering the Fitzroy store and thanking her for creating the space.

“In that interview, I said my industry secret is that the right door will always open. And if it doesn’t, you need to kick down the door or create your own. But what I didn’t say, is that you need to then hold that door open for others. Now that Terrain’s created the groundwork to get that door open in the space.”

She credits the lineage of mentors she’s had over the years and quotes a Navajo elder in California who advised that before the beginnings of a project, a person should ask themselves: what kind of ancestor they would like to be?

“It’s like the orienting of time. How does this shift and what could those ripples be?

The ethos Cristina works around is one of curiosity and immaterial praxis. She recalls feeling that such a space would support her way of thinking, and that she couldn’t be the only person thinking that way.

“We constantly focus on– and it’s really important that we do– the kind of technological aspect and the material solutions affiliated with what it means to sustain sustainability transitions (the world economy, systems, the way we live), but we don’t talk about immaterial sustainability, which is hard to quantify and otherwise hard to implement into the kinds of frameworks that we have, and that’s stuff like… human empathy, compassion; our relationship to anything beyond the self.”

“When you remove the boundary and almost diffuse or redefine what the human self is, and it encompasses all the definitions of nature… how do we behave in that way… that’s actually the work that needs to be done as an undercurrent to enable the longevity of the solutions that we enact on a material level.”

She describes the common occurrence of people entering the store and this philosophy immediately clicking for them.

“... the reason why it [previously] didn't get there is because the language was around addressing immaterial sustainability; about addressing a relationship with the more-than-human world, which is completely intangible. Yet, we're struggling to find energy in recycling!”

It’s this previous lack of understanding in Australia, Cristina reasons, that explains the four years of rejection her Terrain proposal received from “every funding body who you would actually think would be the ones funding this.”

“I tried to hold those rejections and not let them make me want to give up. Because that amount of rejection does make you feel a bit crazy. But to now have undergrad students coming in and confirming that this is supporting their curiosity, rather than it being denied… that’s awesome.”

I ask about the vision Cristina originally had for Terrain, and whether what it’s evolved into now matches up with it. In Four Years of Rejection-Land, what does an expectation even look like? Can the immaterial results of a project be accounted for?

It’s hard to reflect on, she admits. “I still feel like I'm so in it. Like, I haven't had too many pauses since it's been opened to even take the distance or space to take a full gaze outward…”

“In saying that, like... the way that people hang around here or interact, I think, has... totally blown out my expectations… I knew it would be a social space, but the actual people within Terrain’s orbit are so cool and interesting and curious and openminded, intellectual, sharp, and it's really beautiful. Like, that's something you can only plan so much.”

Cristina explains that the intention of the space was to bring people back into their sensorial bodies through the choice of materials, which encourage sensory curiosity and exploration.

“We’ve taken ourselves so far out of our bodies these days in modern culture. We’ve really separated ourselves, like, drawn ourselves into screens and forgotten that the world is sensorial. There's many senses that can be engaged, and just by the act of engaging you bring yourself back into the present, which, in a way, is like bringing yourself into a meditative state. And when you're in that kind of state, all kinds of wonderful things can happen. You have great thoughts, you can engage with compassion, you can have space for people, and think with consideration and… all kinds of things.

… Starting there, getting people back into that frequency, is really important. That goal went into the design and the concept. People walk in from the street and they're drawn into this strange looking interior design, [and] they are immediately entering the space with a frame of curiosity. So by entering with a state of awe, kind of joy, wonder, curiosity, we're actually positioned to take on ideas and value-based change, which is exactly what we need to do, to enable the kind of change that's needed. So, that was all research that went into the design, and then just observing the way that people now interact—everybody's very much doing those things.

They're asking questions, they're asking about the materials, they're asking why these books, what are the topics, which is awesome. And then whoever is in the bookshop has, like, got some kind of knowledge around an answer to these questions, so they can kind of direct, you know, attention or curiosity in that way.

The act of discovery is really powerful, because if they've then discovered a book themselves, in that mindset, that's actually, like, more of a way to take on information as well. Because you found it, like, you discovered it. It wasn't prescribed.

A lot of the time, something that's also surprised me is that people come in, and they'll pick out a book, and then they'll ask me or whoever's sitting here for a recommendation, and then you make some suggestions based on their niche topic, and then they always go back to the first book that they picked up. Like it's some kind of magical oracle card they found. And that's, honestly, a big prop as well, to the beauty of physical bookshops, and having brick and mortar and physical spaces—and how important they are, because that experience, even with an algorithm, you can't really match that randomness.

Like, there is also no randomness in ‘algorithmic random’. Even Cloudflare, the tech company, are the ones that created the best randomiser algorithmically. And it's actually based on real world objects. It's with the room that they have at their data centre, with a whole wall of lava lamps. That was actually how they generated random security keys and funnily enough, it's based on physical objects. So I think there's something to be said there about the importance of physical spaces.”






© Chiaki Chng