Spotlight: Hope Meng

Hope Meng not only is a graphic designer but also a small-business owner and author. (Impressive accomplishments considering she graduated only less than a year ago.) In 2004 Meng opened Stitch Lounge, an urban sewing lounge in San Francisco, which inspired her to author not one but two books that address crafts and sewing for the next generation.

Meng currently works for Noon, a San Francisco-based graphic design studio founded by CCA Graphic Design Program Chair Cinthia Wen.

After receiving her bachelor of arts in economics at UC Berkeley, Meng worked a series of corporate and dot-com/start-up jobs, yet remained unfulfilled. She then turned to CCA to enroll in art classes through its Extended Education Program. Inspired by her identity design class, Meng fell in love with graphic design and decided to go back to school. “I had been doing some freelance web design work prior to that, but I certainly didn’t know anything about print,” Meng explains. She trusted CCA’s reputable academic programs, making the college her first choice.

Meng also liked the concept-based focus of the program: “Before I went to school I really felt like I was just creating forms and not really thinking about their meaning. I think CCA really taught me how to change my process.”

She also fondly remembers a particular CCA summer education program she completed in Oaxaca under current CCA Graduate Design Program faculty member Raul Cabra’s instruction. “You live with local artisans in Oaxaca; you teach them your processes and they teach you their trade, and you work together to create new products. It’s incredible that such a program exists.”

In 2004, still at CCA, Meng opened Stitch Lounge, a drop-in sewing lounge, with two childhood friends, Melissa Alvarado and Melissa Rannels. “We used to haul our sewing machines to each other’s houses to make costumes for Burning Man. One day we decided that it would be cool if a place existed for sewing based on the paint-your-own-pottery places,” explains Meng. The three friends took entrepreneurial classes and applied for a small-business loan. By April 2004 they had signed a lease, and were open for business within a month.

Soon thereafter a publisher approached them about writing a book. They cowrote Sew Subversive: Down and Dirty DIY for the Fabulous Fashionista (Taunton Press, 2006), about refashioning clothing, and which received praise from such notable magazines as Time, CRAFT, and Creative Techniques. Another book coauthored by the same women followed on the heels of its predecessor’s success—Subversive Seamster: Transform Thrift Store Threads into Street Couture (Taunton Press, 2007).

Among Meng’s favorite CCA memories is, not surprisingly, completing her thesis project, something she’s proudest of all because despite her effort to keep separate her sewing from her graphic design work, it was her thesis that allowed her to tackle each simultaneously.

She refers to her thesis as her “crowning achievement,” explaining, “I did this installation of quilts that were based on technology. It was so weird for a graphic design department to be open to that kind of experimentation between forms. I couldn’t imagine something like that happening at other schools. . . . I feel like through my thesis project I finally settled down and learned that I could make something cool if I just invested the time and the thought. I learned to trust my own process and it ultimately delivered.”

Born in New York

CCA degree:
BFA 2007, Graphic Design

Additional education:
BA, Economics, UC Berkeley

Residence:
San Francisco

Current occupation:
Graphic designer, business owner, author

Influences at CCA:
Bob Aufuldish, Mark Fox, Eric Heiman, Jeremy Mende, Michael Vanderbyl, Cinthia Wen

Website:
www.stitchlounge.com