Q&A with Ian Liu, Senior Creative at Elephant
Photo: Ian Liu
Ian is one of my very talented Alberta University of the Arts peers. We have kept in touch over the years, grabbing brunch or having a drink while he is in town for holidays visiting his family. After we graduated Ian attended the School of Visual Arts in New York before moving to New York permanently. He’s also lived and worked in Portland and is a talented designer and art director that has worked on large scale brands like Nike, Amazon, and Comcast, to name a few. In school, I remember Ian being quiet and somewhat reserved, but when he did speak it was to voice a thoughtful insight that brought true value to the discussion or project at hand. When protests broke out around the world in June of this year, I watched. I watched social accounts tones shift and Ian’s was one that I was learning a lot from. I saw his commitment, from weekly cycling protests with @mbr_cycling and Street Riders NYC to educational insights on systemic racism. I reached out because I wanted to understand the current temperature in New York and the United States in general. And as the United States heads into an election this coming November, I wanted to get a perspective from one of my friends who lives there and how Canadians can support our American friends.
Can you tell me a bit about yourself and your background?
I was born in Taiwan and immigrated to Canada with my family when I was 7 years old. After college, I moved to the U.S. But I don’t really have a place that I feel at home since I’ve always moved around. The one thing that guides me is not settling for being in one place or being in one position with my work. And in recent months, I have navigated towards being a creative person that uses creativity to impact social justice.
What inspired you to go to the Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts)? What made you want to be a designer/art director?
I didn’t have much inspiration in high school or any plans in grade 12, but one thing that was consistent in my life was making art. I started doing arts and crafts in day care, and ever since then I have been drawing and painting, and that continued through K-12. In the second half of grade 12 when we had to start applying for universities, a lot of people suggested AUArts. My art teacher was excited when I told him I wanted to apply to an art school so he helped me put together a portfolio. One thing I don’t tell most people is that I also applied to Mount Royal for Architecture and got rejected. I think I’m dyslexic because when I went to libraries as a kid, I always just looked at architectural books instead of reading textbooks. I also loved taking classes in high school that taught you about blueprints and building houses. So, I applied for both programs and got accepted into AUArts.
When I got to AUArts, I still had no idea what I wanted to do. After orientation, I discovered a brochure and learned about what alumni of the design program had done; illustrated covers for Times Magazine, album covers for Madonna and Kings of Leon, or building websites for BMW, I thought that was all so cool and I aligned myself with that program. The VCD program requires you to put a portfolio together for second year to be accepted, so my entire first year was dedicated to putting that together. When I went through VCD, I was geared towards becoming a graphic designer, and luckily we had a photography stream of students in the same space and we were able to collaborate. I worked on some projects with the photography students and that’s when I discovered advertising. I enjoyed coming up with the ideas and writing and photography was a part of that process, so it was organic. When I got the scholarship to go to the School of Visual Arts in New York that is when I realized what an Art Director actually does.
What made you want to move to New York?
Honestly, I moved because I was depressed being in a small town. I was at a point where I could see that this was going to be the rest of my life and that there would be no significant change. So I started to plot for change. It wasn’t easy, I had to make a lot of calls, eventually things began to work in my favour, but it was because I had to be proactive about it. I eventually got the official approval to move to New York and it all really came from being in a state of frustration and anger and feeling stuck.
What was your motivation to join the Black Lives Matter protests?
I’ve noticed that I tend to just act, and things start to register afterwards. You never officially “join” the movement, but you just do your part. I started by going to the bike protests, and this might sound bad, but I was really there to just ride at first. Initially, it was centered around the events in Minneapolis and George Floyd, the man who was killed when a police officer kneeled on his neck for 8min 47sec and it was horrifying to learn about. At the same time, he is one of thousands of Black people that have been murdered over the course of 400 years by the American police system. Not even a week after the death of George Floyd, cities across the world started to peacefully protest and I started to join as well. When we started to protest, whether it be on bikes, marches or rallies, police started to come out. We witnessed police brutally abuse peaceful protestors. What started out as people across the nation, coming out to support what happened in Minneapolis, began to expose and reveal all the police brutality within their own cities. So, with these bike rides, I started going more religiously because I saw that people were rallying behind us. I have been going every week to attend protests and vigils for the past 2.5 months and when I ask myself, “why am I protesting?” it’s because I’ve always felt oppressed and a victim of racism, in recent years especially. After living in the Pacific Northwest for the past three years, I’ve experienced systemic racism. It felt natural for me to go out and protest and support the Black Lives Matter movement.
What is an early memory of experiencing racism in Canada?
I can’t remember any racial attacks on me especially early on. I definitely felt like I didn’t fit in, but never any aggression or anything out of line in my childhood memories. Sometimes a kid on the playground would say something racist and I never really understood how severe the comment was because I was so young and didn’t understand a lot of things.
I did feel out of place when my family and I would go on a road trip around Alberta. We would stop at a predominantly white country club and check it out and they would just look at you like you’re just a bunch of Asians, walking in oblivious that we didn’t belong. Sometimes we’d be asked to leave because it’s a membership only place, but those are the types of scenarios you have when you’re in smaller towns - you have those feelings of being out of place and racially profiled.
There was one incident I remember when I felt like I was being racially profiled which did affect me. I was in Jr.High and my science teacher, an older white man, identified all the ESL students and put us in a corner. At this point, I had been in Canada for 8 years and I no longer considered myself ESL. It was very clear that we were considered outsiders. I didn’t care too much about it, but I told my dad about it and he was really upset, because he knew that it was racist. That was one of the more severe instances of racism in my earlier life.
How did you find the bike protests? What got you involved and what are their goals with the group?
I find everything through Instagram, I’m at the mercy of big tech companies at this point. I discovered @mbr_cycling and @streetridersnyc because as the protests were unfolding throughout the country, there were a lot of Instagram accounts forming. There was one Instagram account in particular that was aggregating everything and updating every single day, notifying people on different marches, rallies and vigils. Through that I found that there were bike rides happening. It was made clear that this was not a joy ride, and that we were here to protest. We rode around Brooklyn mostly, and the people in the neighbourhood responded so positively. Everyone from the grandmothers, to the babies would come out to their balconies to clap and cheer in full on support. Those are the moments you realize everyone is on the same wavelength. Everyone has the same vulnerabilities and the same hurt in their eyes about what’s happening. When you have that moment of unity, it makes you feel like you’re a part of something really big. Even though it’s really sad what is happening to Black people, it’s also very inspiring to see how many people are lobbying for change, and impact to be done about police brutality against Black people.
Have you experienced racism while protesting?
Of course. Every protest, 1 out of every 20 cars will try to run you over. At least once every hour, you have people shouting “All lives matter,” saying some racial slurs, trying to fight you, basically trying to de-value you as a person. I’ve seen a couple cars that try to break through the path of cyclists, but nothing severe yet. It’s expected, and it’s definitely dangerous. We’ve had people shoot fireworks at us, and we’ve had police helicopters follow us as well.
What are your thoughts on the upcoming election? What are you experiencing in New York with political divides?
I think the upcoming election is going to be a lot more important than the one in 2016. The upcoming election is going to be a lot more severe, because when we were in the Obama years, the administration spent 8 years rebuilding what the Bush administration had destroyed. He came in during a recession, and over the 8 years, he brought back more jobs and things were looking up. The last 4 years, all of that has been destroyed and it makes this upcoming election more dangerous. With the Trump administration, the system is being corrupted and the likelihood of a fair election is even lower than in 2016. We are also at the mercy of Russian attacks and cyber hacking. At this point, things are starting to get even worse because people can’t even do simple things like mail a letter, because mailboxes are being taken away. Efficiency is being taken away. The basic services of the US postal service are being taken away.
I feel like this upcoming election is becoming more and more divided and corrupted. It’s more and more worrisome as the days go on, so there’s a lot of anxiety.
Do you feel the political divide with people in New York? What types of discussions are you having?
New York for the most part, in the Metropolitan area, everyone is very in line with each other. If you look at the news, New York was expected to be a hot zone for the Coronavirus, and it was, we had the most deaths, but looking at the track record of the last 5 months, everybody did their part and stayed home, wore a mask, and we are now in the 5th phase of reopening. Now you’re seeing the rest of the country get worse. New Yorkers are more aligned as far as how to handle Coronavirus, and generally people in New York are very liberal. But there are racist people in New York (as we were exposed to during the protests). Tomorrow, we will be protesting from an area in New York, called Bay Ridge, which is known to be predominantly white and racist, so there are sections within New York that are very divided, but generally, New Yorkers are very aligned with each other’s political views and know how to rally together.
How can people help, or show support?
The biggest word for me this year is accountability. People can help by starting to look at themselves in the mirror and evaluate how many times they have held people accountable. The more you hold people accountable, the more you are helping the movement.
Tell me about @arerecipieforkindness.
The hardest part of the pandemic was the beginning. The virus started in Wuhan, China, and as the virus spread throughout China and Europe, it started getting worse and worse, and when it got to America, it officially became a pandemic. People were quick to judge and throw out blanket statements and when people don’t have enough knowledge, they naturally resort to racism. People’s natural human behaviour was to stay away from Asians because that’s where the virus was starting from. So anybody that looked Asian, they saw that as the face of the virus, and gave them the permission to be racist towards Asian people. People have stopped going to Chinatown in their own cities because they thought that that’s where the Coronavirus is.
It started to become very severe when it turned to attacks on Asians. We have Grandmas in their 80s being slapped and set on fire. We have kids in London being brutally beaten up and hospitalized. We have Asian girls in Australia being spit on and verbally abused. And we have a president who is calling the virus the “China Virus” or the “Kung-Flu”.
We had an exercise at work based on a brief put out by the UN on how to spread kindness. A creative strategist said, “why don’t we go to restaurants and have Wuhan noodles as a menu item, and have the tension point of using the word Wuhan, which has been spread through social media and the news to promote food based on that.” At first, I was uncomfortable with it, but as I looked deeper, it was an idea that was very controversial and created tension, but at the same time, by having that discomfort, it opened up conversations about Wuhan, and more creatives jumped on board and we started to concept around it. We started to build it into a platform where we would create recipes inspired by different cultures to lift them up, and to not have those cultures be defined by people’s racism and xenophobia. Our first recipe was the Wuhan Hot Dry noodles. The reputation of Wuhan has been shattered because of the Coronavirus, so we wanted to have Wuhan be known as a place where there is a blossoming food culture.
What is the most memorable project you’ve worked on?
In the recent months, it would have to be A Recipe for Kindness, because I am Asian, and it affects me to have a project that promotes positivity and kindness to fight against hate.
What are some of your greatest lessons you’ve learned thus far?
Don’t make assumptions. We are very quick to make assumptions about people, but at the end of the day, you have to do the work and ask for the facts. Biggest lesson I’ve learned is to not make assumptions about anybody around me.
What was your career path? Why did you move to Portland and then back to New York?
I took a chance when I was 21 to move to New York and I just went with the flow. I was fired from my job and it was the first time I had been fired in my entire life. It was a very severe issue at the time because I was there on a working visa and if you don’t have a job, you have to leave the country. I went back to Canada then spent some time traveling in Southeast Asia, and eventually I was fortunate to have an opportunity pop up in Portland so I was able to get back into the U.S. While I was in Portland, it was a time for me to gather myself, because getting fired for the first time in your life, not because of business, but because of inner agency conflicts and toxic relationships that I had with certain employees, is the worst thing you want to get fired for. You could get let go if business is not good, but getting fired from not being able to do your job to the full effect definitely hurts your ego.
It wasn’t until a couple of months afterwards where I realized the whole firing experience left a traumatic dent in my mental health. After that experience, I started having trust issues and having physical anxieties. My time in Portland was a time to recover, I met a lot of great people and had a great time, but I also started to see systemic racism for the first time in my life. My fellow Asian, Hispanic and Black coworkers were not getting promoted at all while I would see my white coworkers getting promoted. My manager and I put together performance goals for me to achieve a more senior position. I would see another white person on the same level, getting promoted but having not done any of those things. I started to wonder, why do I require to do these things to be promoted, while someone who is white doesn’t have to? I gave the agency three years of my life with no promotion and would see people who spent the same amount of time and effort as me get promoted twice. I was at a point where I couldn’t take it anymore. Being with a company that didn’t care about my development or well-being as an employee, I couldn’t stay in that place. I’ve made a lot of connections in my career and an opportunity came up on LinkedIn so I reached out to my friend who was working there at the time and he made some calls. Next thing I knew I was talking to recruiters and luckily they were a fan of my work, so this agency sponsored me and transferred me to New York. I’m very lucky that I’ve made a lot of friends in my career and I never really set out or planned my moves, I am often just reacting to what’s happening to me and just trying to survive.
Through the process of just trying to survive things has been driving me to different cities and through my career.
What does the future hold for you?
The future holds opportunities to rebuild myself. There’s been a lot of exposure through this pandemic, and one thing we have all realized is that we don’t have to play in this really broken system anymore, and I think the future holds more opportunities for us to not follow the status quo, and to create new things.
What are the podcasts you listen to;
The David Chang Show — Great podcast to listen to if you are a fan of food
What Shapes Us with Sal ‘Sal” Masekela — For anyone who grew up in the 90s watching the X-Games.
Talking to Ourselves — If you’re an ad nerd like me, this podcast interviews legendary Creative Directors
Feeling Asian — if you are an Asian person and you value mental health
Business of Hype with Jeff Staples — Great listen if you’re a hypebeast
Fearless: The Art of Creative Leadership by Charles Day - If you are C suite and looking for podcast to be a better leader
How’s Work with Esther Perel — For anyone who has some type of relationship with a co-worker
Where do we go from here with Esther Perel — If you are a person who is in a relationship and thinking about couples’ therapy
6.99 per pound — Mostly for Asian people who are looking for career advice
A Bit of Optimism with Simon Sinek — With all the anxiety surrounding the pandemic, this is a breath of fresh air
Where can we find you?
You can find me on Linkedin and if you’re in New York you can catch me on the protest rides on Fridays and Saturdays.