Date of Award
Spring 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Graphic Design
First Advisor
Anastasiia Raina
Second Advisor
Elizabeth Goodspeed
Third Advisor
Tycho Horan
Abstract
In a culture that values speed, seamlessness, and instant clarity, Lingering Loading investigates how graphic design can slow down our ways of seeing and knowing. As technology, internet culture, and social media continue to condition us to expect immediate answers, we have become more passive in how we receive meaning. We scroll, absorb, and move on—often without time to ask what we truly think or feel. But in the increasingly rare moments of pause, something undefinable can happen.
To linger is not to delay progress, but to make space for participation—for meaning to emerge from within, not be delivered from outside. Through delays, visual interruptions, and typographic fragments, this book resists the logic of acceleration. It creates space for uncertainty, imagination, and reflection before meaning is fully formed. I repeatedly return to a passage in Tao Te Ching:
The way you can go isn’t the real way.
The name you can say isn’t the real name.
What graphic design makes visible is never the whole story. But perhaps in pausing, in moments that cannot be named or fully defined, we finally encounter ourselves.
Not through clarity, but through ambiguity. Not through resolution, but through rhythm. Not a definition, but a way. The real way.
Recommended Citation
Chang, Chi Hao, "Lingering Loading" (2025). Masters Theses. 1427.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1427
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.